Erchess

[Black Bart]

...If anyone knows of a pay per return with a fee of under $500 to start and under $100 per return or if anyone knows of a package that has 1040 plus entities for under $800 I'd love recommendations. Electronic filing needs to be free or built in with the per return fee.

Post-tax season postcards usually flood my mailbox and here's one that seems to fit your request (others are the usual suspects you already know about-Drake, TaxSlayer, ProSeries, etc.). I don't know anything about this one, can't vouch for it, and have no idea if it's any good or not. Having published that disclaimer , here it is:

Mainstreet Tax Solutions - 877-220-0193 (add .com to name for email). Says it handles all entities and has free unlimited efile. Price-$695 if ordered by 5-30-11.

You have my sympathy -- I'd rather be drawn and quartered than switch tax software. ATX (my provider) assures me I'm "safe" for 2012, but somehow...I'm skeptical of software spokesmen (been burned before).

[erchess]

Ty Bb

I don't know where you got the price. The price I found was $995.

[Black Bart]

True, but

I don't know where you got the price. The price I found was $995.

there's a box on my postcard which states this:

"Only $695 (Regular Price $995) Must Order by 5/30/11"

Of course you can probably assume that it would revert back to $995 next time which might kill off your motivation (depending on your tolerance to the pain of switching).

[dtlee]

Interesting.

This page shows $695:

http://mainstreettaxsolutions.com/index.html

but when you click on the link, the price goes up by $300 on the next page.

Then if you click on "Buy Now" the price goes down again.

It looks like they are reseling a Redgear product from the name.

I am still trying to embrace that software since Drake seems to be have decided they do not want/need a customer base in New York.

Taxworks itself on pay-per-return seems to be $400 with a $400 credit for the returns. My recollection is that each return I did last year cost from $23 to $35 depending on the number of states and whether or not it was an entity or personal (YMMV).

[erchess]

Tax Works

Is it Tax Works or Tax Act that had so many problems this season?

[dtlee]

I know that a lot of TaxWorks users complained about the performance and stability of their software last year. I did not like it but was able to use it with few problems on a machine that was never running anything else at the same time. They also recommend using it on a machine with UAC turned off on Windows 7 and Vista. I don't like that either and ignored them, but was able to use it successfully on a Windows 7 machine. TaxWorks indicated that they "will do significantly better in the coming year" without saying that they did anything below par last year.

I have already renewed with TaxWorks but have not yet decided on Drake.

[MilTaxEA]

Is it Tax Works or Tax Act that had so many problems this season?

There was a discussion a couple weeks ago about the problems many of us had this year with TaxWorks.

[erchess]

TY re TW

TY I thought I remembered hearing about that.

[Snaggletooth]

Drake in NY

I am still trying to embrace that software since Drake seems to be have decided they do not want/need a customer base in New York.(YMMV).

Doug, what has Drake done to you in New York??

[PIGLEE]

I tried Tax Works last year, my words for it was unstable and inconsistint. Went back to Drake, so happy to be back with them. I guess you realize how good something is, when you try something else.

[dtlee]

Their New York softwarre seems to improve each year, but their decisions made at the federal level (and at the overall software level) seem to disregard the impact to New York preparers. Some of my gripes are minor, but taken together, I have begun to feel quite unwanted as a customer.

Some of these off the top of my head include the following:

1. While they get the city and county of residence as part of their input, they do not use these to determine the local sales tax rate to use in the computation of the Sales Tax Deduction for Schedule A. The identification of the local rate is done automatically for some states, but not for New York.
2. For New York, even though you have to tell them what the local rate is, they do not allow you to tell them which local table to use. When the sales tax is computed, they determine which local table to use based on the mailing address, not the city or county of residence. Thus, when a person has moved to another state or uses another state as their mailing address, the wrong table is used and there is no way to override it. You must realize that the computation is wrong and override the final amount (and remember to recompute it any time that AGI changes).
3. Since they use the mailing address, and have no idea how large New York City is, there is some significant confusion about what table to use even when the taxpayer has not moved. Thus, four of the five boroughs of New York City have the Sales Tax Deduction computed incorrectly. (For me personallly, since I have clients only in the four they do wrong, it affects every New York City return I do.) Since you cannot override the table used, the only alternative is to do the computation outside the software and input the result (and remember to do this any time AGI changes).
4. Section 32 of the NY law provides that a tax return preparer or facilitator "must not charge or impose any fee, charge, or other consideration in the making or facilitating of a RAL or RAC apart from the fee charged by the creditor or bank that provides the loan or check." Although New York preparers interpret this as meaning that we may pass on bank fees to RAL or RAC clients, Drake interprets this as meaning that if you charge a bank fee to bank clients, you must charge this same bank fee to clients who do not use any banking products and will not allow preparers who offer bank products to remove this bank fee from nonbank clients and they refuse to consider the possibility that they do this incorrectly.
5. Preparers in New York face a $50 per return penalty for not e-filing returns. Drake e-files New York Corporate Returns in general, but refuses to e-file the New York Returns when the federal corporate return is an 1120-H (which itself cannot be e-filed). Other vendors allow the CT3 and CT3M/4M to be filed in this case, but not Drake. There is no workaround where you can trick the software into efiling a proper New York return by pretending to have an 1120 federal return. You either need to face a nondeductible $100 penalty per 1120-H (since the CT3 and the CT3M/4M count as two paper filed returns) or use another software package to comply with the state requirements.
6. New York State and New York City have many refundable credits. Drake believes that refundable credits change the tax liability. Nearly all New York City returns include a refundable NYC School Tax Credit as do many other New York State returns (due to EIC, Child Care, the Empire Child Tax Credit, and the Tuition Tax Credit). Thus, since they believe these credits change the tax liability, they incorrectly overstate the amount of the reportable 1099-G transactions and understate the amount of taxes paid to the state. Thus they automatically include the wrong amount on the following year's Schedule A and use the incorrect starting amount for computing the taxable portion of the state tax refund; neither of which can be overridden with the correct amount until the following year. This is true of any state with refundable credits, but since New York has more than most, it affects most of the returns I do.

All of these have been brought to their attention, but it does not appear that they intend to correct them. In their defense, they did contact someone at the IRS on which to base the incorrect handling described in item f, but they have ignored more official documentation showing them how wrong they are.

As a final insult, they notified us a few days ago that form IT-205 is now available to be e-filed. I realize that this timing is at least partly New York's fault, but in my frequent discussions with Drake, they never appeared the least bit concerned about this. They also erroneously informed me and their other New York customers that New York's position was to file extensions and just wait for approval. A discussion with the person they spoke to at New York resulted in the following quote, "I can't understand why they keep telling people to file extensions and hold up the returns [I was obviously not the first Drake customer she spoke with]. The e-filing mandate is not intended to delay the filing of returns and we told them that. We know their software has not been approved and we won't be fining anyone for sending in paper returns if the software they use is not yet approved for e-filing."

[MAJ]

Main Street because it is the same...

This is a Red Gear product for sure -
I know, I used it this year from TRX. $299.00 Same price.
If you look elsewhere on their web page they are selling RedGear Accounting as well.

Interesting.

This page shows $695:

http://mainstreettaxsolutions.com/index.html

but when you click on the link, the price goes up by $300 on the next page.

Then if you click on "Buy Now" the price goes down again.

It looks like they are reseling a Redgear product from the name.

I am still trying to embrace that software since Drake seems to be have decided they do not want/need a customer base in New York.

Taxworks itself on pay-per-return seems to be $400 with a $400 credit for the returns. My recollection is that each return I did last year cost from $23 to $35 depending on the number of states and whether or not it was an entity or personal (YMMV).

[Lion]

Doug

With NYS & NYC returns, you should look into software used by the big NY CPA firms. You know their sheer size gives them leverage with their software vendors, and the sheer number of licenses they purchase makes the vendors get NY software right and get NY software soon. Most offer pay-per-return options. I'm in CT and prepare only an occasional NY entity but do lots of NY NR individual returns for my commuters. NY was important to me when I was software shopping. I ended up with ProSystem fx pay-per-return. Pricey but worth every penny during tax season!

[dtlee]

Thanks Lion

I generally agree with you.

However, my comment about this being a problem at the federal level and overall software level was to be very specific that it was not a problem with their New York developers.

When I started with Drake I had to do the New York returns by hand and then see what came out of the software and make adjustments. Drake made a strong commitment to New York a number of years ago and their New York software is quite complete and quite competent now. I have no complaints about their New York development team. They hired some very good developers who were quite familiar with New York State taxes and have a former New York CPA on hand for requirements analysis and quality assurance.

Lacerte is the big star around here, but Drake offers an ability to split a return into two MFS returns that is very important for New York returns which many packages do not. There are a couple of "sweet spots" in the New York State tax rate schedules where filing separately becomes quite beneficial and most software packages do not detect these state differences in their diagnostics. Drake does.

I have a very small practice but rely heavily on this function for my clients. This capability, their New York software, plus their exceptional support staff are reasons why I would prefer to stay with Drake. I cannot afford a package like Lacerte or UltraTax.

I have not looked at ProSystem fx but may look at them. When I was last searching for software, other than Drake, only UltraTax offered diagnostics which would identify that it would be beneficial to split the return due to state savings. Beyond that, the actual splitting of the return into two MFS returns is almost a trivial effort in Drake especially when compared to what you must do in the other packages I have tested.

Thanks for the suggestion.