Are you Satsified with your Tax Software.. Round 2

[dtlee]

Drake is a software product best used by someone who knows what he/she wants to see on the finished product.

An interesting perspective. I've always thought ATX was more fitting for that kind of user, as you are looking at the forms and you can visually see that the amount is showing on the correct line on the form without flipping back and forth between a worksheet and the forms. And in fact you can get to the entry for something by knowing where it will carry to, where-as with Drake you may have to hunt the worksheets to figure out where it pulls from.

Actually, I agree with you, but my point still stands.

I think anyone familiar with the forms themselves will be more comfortable with ATX than with Drake. The point I was trying to make is that the more you know about what you want to see on the finished product, the more appropriate Drake would be for you to use as a tool. Alternately, that the less you know about what you want to see on the finished product, the less appropriate Drake would be for you as a tool. At the extreme, if you have no idea what a correct tax return should look like, you should not expect to be happy with Drake.

The attached page mimics a situation a friend called me about on April 15. She knew how to handle the scenario but somehow got Drake to prepare the lines as shown on page 1 of the attached 1040 from a single 1099-R. There were no error messages from the software and it would have been e-filiable except for the fact that she knew the amounts were reported incorrectly.

A person who was not familiar with how this should have been reported may not have been aware that this is incorrect and could easily have filed it that way.

[appelman]

I've always e-filed them!

Partly because TaxAct is so cooperative. Partly also, I suspect, because the IRS in CA is alerted to these returns and is not thrown for a loss by them. But I don't make two copies of the joint return. First I make one copy for the primary's single return and massage it. Then I copy the primary's finished single return to the secondary and fix that one up. The point is that a lot of the massaging (income and deduction splitting, etc) has already been done on the primary's single and needn't be repeated for the secondary.

[Burke]

ATX doesn't automatically select the best education benefit either, but it's not something I miss.

That would be tough. I did a parents' return and 2 kids with kiddie tax issues and college expenses this year and used a different ed benefit on each in ATX. Primarily because of the state. And with 50 states, that would be difficult to program. I like ATX and use it for individuals, trusts, estates, S-corps and payroll/W-2/1099 returns. Been with them for 12-14 years.