Reviews of TurboTax Premier 2007, 2008, 2009
By
Alan Silverstein,
email address:
ajs@frii.com
Last update: April 1, 2010
Note: This is installing and running TTP on an updated Windows/XP PC.
Contents:
2009 Negatives
Overall the product is noticeably better than last year, especially
forms access, so don't let the following feedback bum anyone out. But
here goes anyway.
-
SLOW INSTALLATION: Getting TTP (from CD) is so slow (many minutes)
that it would be nice if hovering over the rectangle in the toolbar
would show the percentage completed, without having to raise the
window.
-
STATUS REPORTING: Would be nice to have 100% on-screen reporting at
ALL TIMES of both status (sometimes while waking up nothing appears at
all) and progress (how much longer will something take?)
-
CUT/PASTE: Could the paste control number (from PDF copy of W2) into
W2 download form, but not dollar amount; ignored right-click.
In general, continued lack of consistent ability to cut/paste TTP
window text boxes remains annoying; causes a fair amount of tedious
retyping.
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MISLEADING SUMMARY: We had agricultural payments for 2009. The
"Government Payments Summary" screen still shows all zeroes after
using Edit to enter my 1099-G data. I'm sure it's in there somewhere,
but shouldn't the screen reflect what I just did?
-
FARM INCOME, BIGGIE AGAIN: Quick interview asks if we had any income
from a farm. ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR, THIS IS MISLEADING. We rent out
pastures and share-crop some crops with tenants, but we really don't
know how to answer this question (except for painful experience in
past years). I said "Yes" and went down a ways before thinking I had
it wrong, backed up, said "No", then the NEXT screen asked me about
farm RENTAL income.
Sigh. Intuit must realize that people with farm rental income do not
understand the first question you are asking! YES we had income from
a farm, but it goes on Form 4835 NOT on Schedule F, and your question
would trap and mislead the innocent.
-
DONATIONS: Disappointed that the donations section still assumes I
want to enter ALL of my details, charity by charity, into TTP. That
would be fine (although tedious) if I did want to do it that way, but
we have our own separate records of donations made over the years. I
do NOT fire up TTP over the year, I don't even buy the 2009 version
until 2010 rolls around. I want to just enter total cash + non-cash
donation amounts for each of me and my wife. I'm forced to make up
information here, like a fake date. Give me a clean way to just say,
"the details are my own business, I have my own records, here are my
totals."
-
STATE VEHICLE TAXES: Colorado added vehicle registration ROAD FEE and
BRIDGE FEE items last year (as titled on registration forms). I
suspect they are not deductible like the "OWN TAX" amount, but it
would be reassuring if TTP said as much. I was not able to find
anything on the web detailing this either. Apparently the gov't
ripped us off by calling them "fees" not "taxes"; the latter would
require a public vote under the Colorado constitution. And thus they
screwed us again because this way the "fees" are not deductible?
Apparently not.
-
REVIEW MISLEADING: Under "Federal Review", "Taxes", the Review button
leads surprisingly to "Deductions and Credits", where I wanted to see
how they computed the tax. I had to look up the form instead.
-
FORMS: My impression is that Forms access is simpler and more
logical... I can get to a list of all of them, from anywhere? But I
still can't tell which forms go to the IRS and which don't. Some
titles are bold, some are not, but some worksheets are bold, and I
don't know the difference. There are extra copies (?) of some items
for no obvious reason. It's STILL hard for me to review my forms and
know exactly what I am submitting, at least before I get to the
print-to-PDF/save stage much later.
-
IRA CONTRIBS: If there's a way for TTP to help me figure my IRA
contribution limits for 2009, I still don't see it. Appears it wants
me to tell it what I actually did, not tell me what I'm eligible to
do. Apparently I must find the worksheet and compute that on my own.
-
PERFORMANCE: Going through and reviewing every form brought my PC to
its knees. It appears TTP caches forms images already generated, this
is good, but it's too dumb to avoid ending up with massive memory use
and resulting page faults? "Thrashing is virtual crashing."
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ACROBAT ANNOYANCE: During the Efile process, a popup window about
previewing forms using Acrobat says I must have AcroRead installed;
"select Continue and we'll install it," but the choices are "Yes" and
"No". I said "Yes" and now I'm in a browser window that wants to
download the latest Acrobat product. First, "Continue" versus
"Yes/No" is a disconnect; and second, it offers me no way to say, "I
already have it, just use what I have."
Same foofahrah later when I try to "Save Forms"; "Preview PDF" insists
I must download AcroRead first, but I already have it, and THIS time I
cannot proceed without doing SOMETHING. Saying "No" just closes the
popup window, and "Yes" brings up the browser again to download. I
THINK I have the latest Acroread, and if not, it's annoying that it's
only a version issue that needs fixing.
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POPUP PRE-EMPTION: Furthermore, while the "Save" popup window is up,
I cannot minimize the TTP window to access my desktop. Very annoying.
Hit Cancel, hope that's OK, and it takes a long time.
2008 Overall
I noticed many obvious improvements in the product, including some
issues that had bothered me last year. I don't know if my feedback made
the difference, but I could see a lot of signs of progress. I'm
definitely more "hooked" on TTP now, even learning (and remembering a
year later) some user interface aspects that made navigation easier this
year.
I still had my share of annoyances though. I had to remind myself
several times that the mere fact of having such a powerful tax
calculation tool was nearly miraculous, and a CPA would cost at least
10x as much, and still make mistakes, and not answer emails, ...
2008 Positives
-
E-filing got a lot cheaper, although I don't recall how much.
-
Initial install went pretty smoothly. No issues with having last
year's programs or data on the system either. Smooth
import/transition.
-
The "view forms" section is much better, at least as I
perceived it. This year I actually learned ctl-1 and ctl-2 to switch
back and forth, found the listed forms to mostly be logically arranged
and easy to find, etc. When preparing to eFile, the review and PDF
made a lot more sense than last year.
2008 Negatives
-
The price at Sam's Club went up from ~$59 last year to ~$75 this year.
(We chose to buy the CD again rather than save ~$10 buying an online
copy.)
-
The second-state cost went up (I think), but we didn't care because
both years (2007 + 2008) we used TTP for our "alternate" state, and
just transcribed information from it to the excellent NetFile website
in our home state.
-
After doing initial install/updates and starting TTP again, it said,
"checking for updates" again. It would be cool if it knew it had just
completed that, and didn't waste my time.
-
We went for the faster interview method again this year, not the full
interview. I hope we didn't miss any good advice as a result. (Come
to think of it, if there's a "what's new for 2008" page like the IRS
provides in the paper instructions, I don't recall seeing it.) The
package advertised that it could help us find 350 deductions, but as
an experienced taxpayer, I didn't want to walk through 350 questions
to see if I was missing something new!
-
Working alone, I found myself at various times wanting to cut/paste
text from TTP windows, say to email an explanation to my wife to ask
her how to handle her rental house. I was unable to "cut" from TTP
text. Inability to cut/paste in/out of many windows and forms was
very annoying (and surprising).
-
While the "view forms" section was a lot better, I didn't understand
why some items were bold and others normal font. This didn't convey
anything useful or obvious to me, just worried me that I was missing
something important. Also, there seemed to be some kind of
multiple-form open/scroll (horizontally) mechanism above the currently
displayed form, but it wasn't very useful as soon as I visited more
than 3-4 forms; it was painful to use. I don't mind a push/pop stack,
but keeping around all that I'd visited was annoying and didn't make
for fast navigation.
-
Short interview method: When I opened a category and then did
Start/Revisit, did some editing, and said Done, I came back to the top
with the category closed down again -- I had to find and reopen it --
that was annoying. My mental model is that I opened and went into X,
now back at the top page, I want to view its current status.
-
Many pages offer you, "Show Tax Form" when there's no tax form
associated. That's annoying. Gray it out or something.
-
Donations: The system seemed to want us to enter line-item
descriptions of every donation we made. We keep track of this
separately "offline", but I couldn't find a way to just tell it
"here's the total" without also making up a date, etc.
-
Disconnect, minor, noted on rental property screen: "Select your
method", presented in the order "expert" or "quick" (reading
top-down), but the buttons are in the reverse order (reading left to
right), which causes a double-take.
-
Entering rental house expenses, I pasted a number from elsewhere, hit
TAB, and it got wiped out. Only by moving the mouse and selecting
another field would it "stick". Also it unexpectedly rounded off the
number (no cents) although W2 form entry did accept cents,
which seems inconsistent.
-
Running through my personal Schedule E details spreadsheet, I had a
number ready for mileage, but was told under the "travel" page not to
include vehicles. Later it asked me for "any other expenses," and
that was my first opportunity to enter this amount, right or wrong. I
did, and it turned out to be wrong. Later on a higher level summary
screen, I saw a section below for "vehicle expenses," and had to back
it out of the previous location.
-
Single biggest issue again this year, despite reporting it last
year: Disappointed to find that TTP still thinks passive farm income
is subject to SE tax (hundreds or thousands of dollars), and it does
not help you avoid it. Apparently the way to avoid SE tax is to enter
the same dollar amount as "exempt" on line 5 of 1040-SS (or is it SE
this year?)... I couldn't find a way to access it or add it! Buried
on forms list under "Sch SE", hard to find... And no way to exempt
it?
Later, I finally discovered that farm and farm rental income (which
are not the same thing) can end up on Schedule E, Schedule F, or Form
4835 (which is similar to Schedule F, but does not impose SE tax).
Apparently you are supposed to "know" when it asks if you had "farm
income", that the answer is "no", you had "farm rental income"!
Sheesh. In our case, some of my wife's passive income is from pasture
rental, and some is from crop sharing. Even though TTP asked if it
was active or passive, it still cluelessly led us into a Schedule F.
Later I had to delete this from the forms list (at least the 1040-SE
went away too), and find and fill out a Form 4835 "manually".
I emailed TTP Support about the issue, and got back an inane reply
saying apparently they'd fixed my problem... NOT! I had to
figure it out (eventually) for myself.
It took a call to the IRS, and waiting on hold several times, to
discover that we should never have been misled by TTP into using 1040
Schedule F! (Which we did end up erroneously using for 2007.)
We should have used Form 4835, just as the CPA did in the past before
we bought TTP. You would never know this from the interview:
"Did you have any farm income?"
I don't know, if you say "no" to "farm income" and later "yes" to farm
rental income, if it knows how to put it on Schedule E versus Form
4835. I guess I'll find out next year.
-
Before figuring out the previous issue, I decided to ask Live
Community about it. I typed in my question, and then was told
I had to register first -- that's obnoxious.
-
The help screen said I should be able to use my InnerCircle
registration (from last year), but it didn't work, and when I tried to
recover my password, it said my user name wasn't known either --
implying it tossed me out after last year -- I did have a written note
of both the user name and password.
-
I found a way (through View Forms) to add a Form 4835, but trying to
fill it out, it wouldn't accept any details, just showed a magnifying
glass, which took me to a 1099G, but which had a different total (goes
in two different categories). This is no better than for 2007.
-
During federal error check, TTP informed me I couldn't have over 2000
miles for vehicle business use (Schedule E), before/after July 1, but
with no explanation, nor could I find anything in the forms or
instructions saying why not, nor did it ask me earlier to come up with
a lower number. This late error without explanation was really
irritating.
Then I figured out that I'd accidentally entered too low a number for
total miles, and fixed that. The error check didn't help me
understand this, it gave me the impression there was some kind of
federal mileage limit.
-
TTP cheerfully informed us that we could get a larger refund by doing
a (phased-out, not max) traditional IRA contribution, but didn't help
us figure out the maximum (qualified) amount. I had to go calculate
it for myself, then found the IRA Deduction (not Contribution)
worksheet in the forms section to prove it.
2007 Overall
Would I buy it again, or recommend it to others?
Yes, I'll probably buy it again, unless I get recommendations to start
fresh with something supposedly better. But I'd only recommend it with
caveats.
2007 Background
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I'm a software engineer with human factors training and experience.
-
I did my own taxes by hand for many years, using home-brew scripts and
spreadsheets specific to my own needs. (Including 1040, schedules A, B,
D, sometimes C.)
-
Married in 2003, she came with a CPA and new federal schedules (grin).
Started using her CPA. He was far from home, didn't communicate well,
and made some mistakes, which I caught by comparing with my (expanded)
tools.
-
After two years, switched to another, local CPA... High costs, with no
prior estimates, and still some mistakes, although it was nice that they
ran their software to do all the dogwork and produce the forms.
-
After two more years, bought TTP in February 2008 for ~$59 at Sam's
Club. It was recommended by a friend who'd used it, "for 20 years and
it keeps getting better every year."
-
I was motivated by some dissatisfactions to create this webpage
summarizing my experience. Hopefully this will cause positive changes,
or at least inform others of some downsides.
2007 Positives
-
Rich set of features, completely handled our return (since we'd been
clued which package to buy), and a mostly pretty good GUI. Not too many
obvious violations of basic human factors guidelines.
-
Simple installation, took a long time, 20-30 minutes total with a high
speed connection, but at least it was a clear process.
-
Can use item-by-item editing or a step-by-step interview process, and
this became clear pretty fast.
-
Good use of context-sensitive topic help, and mostly good explanations
of logic/reasoning.
-
Good automatic raising of a browser for web-sourced material, although
it's not always obvious that you were switched to a browser.
-
Direct print of full tax package to PDF is great -- once I found it.
2007 Negatives (task-oriented end-user disconnects)
-
Overall, more learning curve than I would have liked. Not for just
entering the numbers, but for navigating the application and finding
what I needed.
-
Hidden cost for additional states ($35 each), not mentioned on the box
or early in the user interaction; an issue for us because we must file
in two states. We decided to use TTP for the "remote" state, and
Colorado NetFile (web-based) for our home state. It was, as we'd heard,
a very simple answer, although we had to transcribe some numbers from
TTP into their website. By doing this, we avoided paying $35 more.
-
Cost per return to eFile (~$18) is mentioned on the box, but it was
unclear if that's per federal + state return pair, or each separate
return. Turns out to be latter (no surprise, oh well), and you don't
find out until it's time to pay at the end. You can always
print-and-mail instead...
-
When navigating back to any section using choices near the top of the
screen, you're forced to walk through some screens over and over again
("good news, you are getting a rebate!") even when you don't want
interview mode, and are trying to instead select specific items to
revisit. Very annoying.
-
Cannot easily navigate to viewing any one tax form, although sometimes
one pops up below at the bottom of the screen and can be expanded.
(Never did notice a pattern to when this did or did not happen.)
-
Later I realized that I was completely overlooking the top toolbar, not
realizing that it was very application-specific and useful. There are
enough other features on the screen to grab your attention while hunting
for the answer to a task like, "How do I view my tax forms so far?" You
could easily miss the toolbar (I did) and wonder, "What were they
thinking, making this so hard?"
-
Closing a popup tax form rather than returning to the interview
(pressing the wrong button), loses your place. (But not your data.
Generally a very good job done of capturing and retaining information.)
-
Interview style, and also item lists, do not follow the order of tax
forms or lines, which is annoying to those familiar with the forms.
There's a hidden transformation from what you enter to the tax forms,
and I never did find a way to inquire about these data flows.
-
You might say to me, as a tax-savvy end user, why don't you just fill
out the forms directly, as you (apparently) can? (Once you figure it
out.) But a lot of the perceived value of this application is that it
walks you through questions, offers options, answers questions, etc. It
know current tax law better than I do, so I do want to walk through its
script... But I also want to feel empowered by it, not have details
hidden, or lose my place, or have it do things I don't understand and I
can't get it to explain.
-
TTP asked us for 1099-G info early, created a semi-hidden worksheet, and
later I could not find a logical way to bind this worksheet (once I
found it) to the farm income page. This was very confusing. It showed
a summary dollar total too high, but it was not apparent in the details
what was going on. The summary/jump page showed a higher total than the
details upon doing edit/review. Later we found the extra, apparently it
was hidden as "farm rental income" apart from "farm income," although
CPAs never treated it that way.
-
Unclear GUI for how to work with a backing document like a 1099-G. What
does "1 of 10 copies used" mean? Why did it keep creating untitled or
even titled copies? Why was I unable to bind it successfully to what I
thought was the appropriate form field? Even after I got the bottom
lines to agree with my spreadsheet, on a final review of PDFs, I noticed
a total twice what was expected in one cell, although the manually
entered "taxable amount" field nearby was correct. I had to go back and
figure out how to find and delete a second copy of a 1099-G that had
sprung into existence somehow, possibly when I deleted our entire
Schedule F and started over.
-
Early on, TTP asked us for 1099-MISC info on my wife's rental house.
Later it asked for other rental house information. For reasons I don't
understand (nor do I recall the details), I found myself re-entering
some information identifying the property, although in a different
manner. Much later than that, I saw that TTP had created two Schedule E
columns (A and B) for the same property, although with slightly
different descriptions. One showed the 1099 income, and the other had
all the rest of the data.
Possibly this resulted from the fact that she started with a property
management company partway through the year. Hence some of her rental
income was via 1099-MISC, and some was not. The interview process
apparently had no concept of this, and it routed data as if to two
different properties. I elected not to worry about trying to fix this,
after previous unhappy experiences dealing with 1099 worksheets. (At
this point I still couldn't explain to someone else how those really
work, they are mysterious. I see they exist, and I can manipulate them,
but any relationship to my tax forms is arcane.) The bottom line is
correct, and it should be clear enough that we just "accidentally"
separated data all for one property (victims of the tax package).
-
Single biggest issue: Despite having the "passive" farm income
box checked, TTP insisted that farm income went on 1040-SS line 1.
Separate research (including IRS Pub 225 page 74) said this is wrong,
also, our CPAs never treated it this way. After going around in loops
for a while, I had a new idea... I thought I had to override it to zero
on 1040-SS, which caused later problems, see below.
-
Each time revisiting one of the screens, TTP auto-pre-checked the box
for, "you owe SE tax". if I unchecked that box, next time it would be
checked again. Why ask me, if you won't listen to my input?
-
Sent feedback about this and one other issue through the feedback
mechanism, but never heard anything that way.
-
Later I managed to find how to send an email request for technical
support. I got a prompt and lengthy reply, but apparently incorrect.
They suggested adding Form 4029, which looks like a request to avoid
Social Security for moral reasons!
-
The screen for entering email text includes a typical very tiny box,
which makes it difficult to compose good text.
-
The support email response appeared to be replyable, so I wrote back at
length to that address, and then got a reply saying my email
would be ignored! (With no copy of the original included, either.)
That's obnoxious. The from-address or the first few lines of the reply
should make it clearer that we are not about to have a
conversation, don't even try...
-
Over time, I sent two more emails (I think) and got two more replies.
None of them actually helped me.
-
After generating an email, an "incident ID" is given back to you
on-screen, and emailed to you, but the later email reply from tech
support doesn't apparently contain it. But if you call the phone number
they give you, it asks for that number. It turned out I should have
kept the earlier screen or email auto-reply, or figured out that it was
the middle part of the number in the human-generated reply's "Subject"
text. This was unobvious, and annoying since I was already "held up"
trying to resolve a problem.
-
I emailed for the third or fourth time. This time when I got a new
incident ID number and tried to enter it on the phone system, it was
"unknown". Although it didn't seem to make any difference if I had the
number, or not! I still could/did wait on hold for a human.
-
Wait time estimated at 40 minutes! Eventually I put a cordless phone on
speaker mode and waited. When a live person answered, they were
patient, but also clueless, and not helpful about my problem.
-
Thinking we had a good enough solution using an override, we got through
the TTP federal error review/check with no more problems reported,
laboriously entered all info needed to eFile, and then were told
we could not continue without removing the override! What's the point
of the earlier check if it lets me get so close, then disappoints me?
This particular point was so infuriating, I knew at that moment I was
going to create this webpage. My wife and I had to give up for the
evening in disgust, wait a few days, and try again.
-
Later, I had to figure out on my own that apparently the way to avoid SE
tax is to enter the same dollar amount as "exempt" on line 4 of 1040-SS.
Recall that the CPAs in the past had never mentioned or used this form
at all, and no one I contacted at TTP could explain this, or
perhaps even understood the question.
-
Once you set up to eFile, including entering info for direct debit of
amount due, you can't print the return because the direct debit box is
checked! -- Later we discovered that trying to go into "mail my return"
to get it printed, was our problem, and there was a way hidden
elsewhere to just print it directly to a PDF (which is nice). But as
usual, this feature was hard to find, or even to know it existed.
(Probably their mental model is that you don't want to, or even should
not, print your return until it's all done. But I absolutely wanted to
see the PDF form, on-screen, at many times, because it was a familiar
format, and the one that the IRS would actually use, at least in
theory.)
-
I'd never used eFile before. TTP offered no way to discover what
information would or would not be communicated to the IRS from the 97
total PDF pages in our package. In the past I was reluctant to "snow
the IRS" with any form that wasn't required. Did TTP include my 1040-SS
with a zero balance, or leave it off? I'm OK with telling the IRS
everything they need to know, but dislike sharing with them (or anyone)
any personal info they don't need to know... Even if TTP says my audit
risk is low.
-
After e-filing, the package urged me to print some docs, but I couldn't
preview them, and its print initiation page didn't allow me to select
that option either at a lower level (on my PC), so I blindly accepted.
Fortunately the printout was only four pages long, but none of it is
anything I would have chosen to waste ink on, starting with an
"advertisement" (thank-you letter) from the company.
-
I recall finding lists of tax forms in various ways, but it was
generally at least initially confusing what the list meant. One list I
vaguely recall was comprehensive, but links took you to blank forms or
explanations (?). Another list appeared to be only the forms related to
my return, but I couldn't view/print them all at once. Eventually I
found the "save to PDF" option (which I think of as a form of
printing), and by default it included everything, which was good,
although some of the TTP-specific pages are unlabeled in the PDF table
of contents, and it's not clear which forms go to the IRS and which are
"private worksheets." Also there seemed to be a lot of duplication,
with identical information showing up in the same or similar worksheets.
-
I didn't mind too much the "advertising" screens asking if I wanted to
pay extra for various services. But I was annoyed to discover that live
chat help would be pay-as-you-go, and there was no way to just start an
email exchange with tech support. I could email them, they would reply,
but then I could only write back again, to someone different, through
the TTP email screen again, generating a new "incident".
-
I was invited by one human tech support email reply to join the TT
"inner circle", but didn't know how to find it... Maybe I didn't look
hard enough. (Later I found it under "Send Us Feedback", oh well.)
After e-filing, TTP offered me an online survey, I took it, and then it
offered to let me join the inner circle. I decided that, just as I
didn't want to pay any extra, I also didn't want to join anything, just
to offer the company constructive feedback. Hence, this webpage...
2007 Postscript (happy news)
After I created this webpage, I tried to tell Intuit that it existed. I
sent another email through their system. I got back a reply saying: I
must have really liked their product, obviously they were successful in
meeting my needs, and thanks for the praise! -- I don't know if they
were kidding, or maybe it was a canned response sent by a droid in
India.
Later I decided to join their Inner Circle just to see what it was
about. "That was interesting..." Lots of screens and questions
involved; lots of opportunities to type in any text I wanted; also to
check-box that I agreed with other people's statements. So far I
haven't regretted it; no follow-up "spam" emails or phone calls, etc.
It was never clear if anyone at the company was actually listening.
Well a few days later I received a very gratifying "unofficial" email
from an engineer at the company (who identified him/herself, but shall
remain nameless). We chatted a little in a friendly way, and I was
really impressed by what I heard. They do care a great deal
about customer satisfaction and new-user experience. They put a lot of
effort into getting it right, and making it usable.
It wouldn't surprise me if some of what I experienced resulted from
inevitable, perhaps in practice unavoidable, disconnects that happen in
any large software package, no matter how hard the authors try to
satisfy their users. Tax software must be especially difficult because
of the underlying complexity, and the fact that no one really wants to
learn it, or to use it (any more than they can help). Couple that with
a high-volume, mass market, and it's disappointing but not surprising
that the support experience, when you do encounter a glitch or
confusion, can seem so erratic.