A Taxes Story
Unlike the majority of the populous, every year I actually look forward to tax time. Don’t get me wrong, the work isn’t all that fun, but the payoff is great–what can I say? I love getting my refund. Like most things, I was an early adopter of the efile. I think I have only done paper forms and snail mail once or twice in my life, and have never paid someone else to do my taxes for me. As soon as I heard that there was such a thing as efile, I was on board.
Like my father before me*, I have always been a TurboTax guy, having used both their online product and software. This year, I got access to either a discount to Intuit’s TurboTax online, or a free H&R Block’s TaxCut software. I have never thought about switching from TurboTax, since it has always been fast, simple, and easy to use, but free is always pretty compelling, so I gave TaxCut a try.
As always it took a couple of hours and some help from Chesney’s record-keeping to get everything all entered in, but for the most part, TaxCut was just as simple and easy as TurboTax was in past years. Federal error check: passed. State error check: passed. Then I get to the part where you file, and I get an error saying that Chesney’s SSN on a particular worksheet on my Federal and Caleb’s SSN on another worksheet on my State “matched”.
I double-checked, triple-checked, and tried numerous things and numerous times to get the thing to go through, but it kept coming up with that error. After troubleshooting for an hour while everyone else enjoyed watched the latest Gilmore Girls, I gave up and went straight to turbotax.com. I entered everything (again). No errors, no problems, everything was filed and sent in. I woke up this morning, checked my e-mail, and my returns were accepted and I should have my refund direct deposited in 10 days.
TurboTax, forgive me, and may my eyes never wander again.
* My dad was a licensed tax preparer
I’m old school. I still do it by hand. Tax season sucks!
I’m glad you had an experience that demonstrates that there really are differences between the tax software products. And, I’m glad TurboTax came through for you again.
Bob Meighan
VP, TurboTax
I’m sorry you had difficulty using TaxCut. It appears from your description that this issue was related to a bug in a particular form in our California program. This issue was fixed via an update posted 2/8.
TaxCut is just as easy to use as TurboTax. We hope you will consider us again in the future.
D.Swords
Director TaxCut
Once upon a blue moon, Turbotax was on a 5-1/4 inch floppy, and no state program. I think I started using it in 1987 or 88. That shows my age.
Since we signed up as Wycliffe missionaries in 1993, I didn’t get much refund, so I filed last minute. Later on, it was literally last minute! I would go to the Walnut Creek Post Office at about 11:30 pm on deadline day, and be one of scores of cars lined up along the curb to drop my tax returns on the huge bins. It actually became fun and exciting after the first year, and so I made it an annual Tax Day Pilgrimage to the Walnut Creek Post Office!