Tax Software - what to pick...
 

My new employer does not pay for a tax company to do my taxes, but reimburses for software instead.

I've looked at some of the packages out there, but I am not sure what to go with. It's probably a toss-up between Turbotax and H&R Block.

I'd be interesting in finding out some experiences or pros and cons.
For what it's worth, I receive W2's from several states.

I used to use TaxCut (H&R), but when their agreement with Fidelity (and many other parties, I believe) was discontinued, I switched to TurboTax. I have been able to import W2 data from both of my wife's companies, all of my data from Fidelity, and TDAmeritrade data will be available soon. Given that the core functions of collecting data, doing calculations, filling our forms, etc., is a bit of a commodity, the time savings of entering all interest, dividend, sales, capital gains, wash rules, etc., data, made Tax Cut a no-brainer in my situation.

YMMV, based on your situation. There are several "free" sites if all you need is a 1040EZ, but I suspect you wouldn't be asking if that were the case.

You may do what I did when I was looking to switch. TurboTax online lets you import/enter everything for free, paying to print/file. I used that to confirm that it had the functionality I needed (using dummy data, mostly), then went ahead and purchased for use on my PC.

You can save 25% off through this link from Fidelity, even if you're not a Fidelity customer.

I've used TurboTax on the web every year for the last 11 years. It is a really powerful solution that works with all the situations a person who is not a bazillionaire is likely to encounter. It asks yes/no questions to cover everything including self employment, foreign taxes, and a lot of other stuff. My mom, the CPA, always tells people to just use TurboTax.

The thing I like about the web version is that TurboTax stores my tax returns and prepopulates applicable thing s into this year's return from last year, which saves time. TT will also, as noted, import from a variety of employers and financial institutions.

This year, TT saved me about $3000 in taxes by informing me that Illinois allows the deduction of 100% of my Roth IRA conversion - I ordinarily would do the Illinois taxes by hand since they are so simple.

You can start a tax return for free - you only pay when you choose to print the forms or e-file.

+1 for TurboTax. I've been using it for ten years or so - I've never used any other tax software.

I've used both and they both are fine.

If you are doing multiple states, and want to use the software for those too, make sure all the states are supported. The price of the software quickly goes up if you start adding different states, you may want to look and see if they are simple enough to just download the form and do it by hand.

Does anybody know of affordable tax prep software for a very small business that enables a partnership to e-file in Massachusetts? Specifically, my son needs to file Massachusetts Form 3 (the MA equivalent of the federal 1065) for an LLC. Apparently, they are required to e-file because they have at least one out-of-state partner. He is having a hard time finding what he needs. He talked to a couple of the big ones (including TurboTax), but their software does not support this. It looks like Taxworks might have it, but at a prohibitively high price. TIA.

Get TT deluxe, I've used it for the past decade and it just keeps getting better. It's only about 35$ download from amazon.

TT works well....never tried others....I use the version that loads on my computer since I found web response times to be slow sometimes.