What sorts of software do people here use and what do people like or dislike about those packages?
I absolutely want the ability to prepare every possible income tax form in the US. I want to do all entities and every State and Local return. I currently have the ability to efile only individual returns but I would like to efile all returns. I would also like to pay for my returns on a per return basis because I do relatively few and would like to not write a huge check at the beginning of tax season or monthly checks even during the season that are not tied to the returns I do. I will happily pay an electronic filing fee rather than pay more for the software. I will happily pay $75 per return if there are no up front costs. I do realize that if I do a reasonable number of returns my plan will cause me to spend more for the software than if I paid up front. However, I have yet to do a reasonable number of returns. There is also the fact that I don't mind spending all of my income from fees on the business but I try to avoid spending my income from other sources on the business.
I tried a demo version of Tax Refund Express. The price is certainly good but I don't like the fact that each screen has only a few places to enter information. For example just entering one stock transaction seemed to take up more than one screen. There was not always anything on the screen to tell me what use would be made of the numbers I put in. I remember one point when it asked something like the value of section something intangibles for the transaction I was working on. If I hadn't known what that meant, the program had nothing to tell me.
For the last two years I used Worldwide Web Tax Value Pack. The total price is reasonable and the program works great. I can have enough information on the screen at one time that I can remember what I am doing. There is no tax theory help, however, and I got used working for another company to a lot of tax theory help available on the computer. Their technical support people are great and the program had fewer glitches than I am used to other than glitches due to my experiencing viruses or hardware/driver/windows problems. (When I worked for other companies at least once a week notice would come down that under certain circumstances the software was making a given calculation incorrectly and until further notice the procedure was bla bla bla. A few days later we would get notice that the problem had been fixed but in at least half of all cases there was a new problem caused by the fix. All this sort of stuff is gone with WWW T.) However, this year I noticed that the Federal Business module did not come out until mid February and the last State Business modules did not come out until mid March. I am particularly concerned by the fact that City returns do not seem to be available. I am therefore leaning against using this company in 2008.
If it were legal I would buy for each client a copy of Turbo Tax or a membership in one of the site based preparation engines. I have yet to see one of these where there was a way for me to sign as paid preparer. and it's obviously wrong on many levels to take money for doing someone's return without signing as paid preparer.
I absolutely want the ability to prepare every possible income tax form in the US. I want to do all entities and every State and Local return. I currently have the ability to efile only individual returns but I would like to efile all returns. I would also like to pay for my returns on a per return basis because I do relatively few and would like to not write a huge check at the beginning of tax season or monthly checks even during the season that are not tied to the returns I do. I will happily pay an electronic filing fee rather than pay more for the software. I will happily pay $75 per return if there are no up front costs. I do realize that if I do a reasonable number of returns my plan will cause me to spend more for the software than if I paid up front. However, I have yet to do a reasonable number of returns. There is also the fact that I don't mind spending all of my income from fees on the business but I try to avoid spending my income from other sources on the business.
I tried a demo version of Tax Refund Express. The price is certainly good but I don't like the fact that each screen has only a few places to enter information. For example just entering one stock transaction seemed to take up more than one screen. There was not always anything on the screen to tell me what use would be made of the numbers I put in. I remember one point when it asked something like the value of section something intangibles for the transaction I was working on. If I hadn't known what that meant, the program had nothing to tell me.
For the last two years I used Worldwide Web Tax Value Pack. The total price is reasonable and the program works great. I can have enough information on the screen at one time that I can remember what I am doing. There is no tax theory help, however, and I got used working for another company to a lot of tax theory help available on the computer. Their technical support people are great and the program had fewer glitches than I am used to other than glitches due to my experiencing viruses or hardware/driver/windows problems. (When I worked for other companies at least once a week notice would come down that under certain circumstances the software was making a given calculation incorrectly and until further notice the procedure was bla bla bla. A few days later we would get notice that the problem had been fixed but in at least half of all cases there was a new problem caused by the fix. All this sort of stuff is gone with WWW T.) However, this year I noticed that the Federal Business module did not come out until mid February and the last State Business modules did not come out until mid March. I am particularly concerned by the fact that City returns do not seem to be available. I am therefore leaning against using this company in 2008.
If it were legal I would buy for each client a copy of Turbo Tax or a membership in one of the site based preparation engines. I have yet to see one of these where there was a way for me to sign as paid preparer. and it's obviously wrong on many levels to take money for doing someone's return without signing as paid preparer.
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