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TurboTax- ItsDeductible

TurboTax- ItsDeductible

List Price: $19.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Year 3 and counting!
Review: This is my third year using this product and I am very pleased with it. If you donate throughout the year and keep track as you go, this will be a great help to you. I could never figure out just how much to claim for things. This program clears up most of it. I don't understand all the people having trouble using the program. It works great for me!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: ItsDeductible - It's a pain
Review: This is one of the worst (maybe THE worst) softwares I have ever used. It installed easily, then required 1-1/2 hours on chat line to install the required update. (I will say, the technician was polite - and so was I. It took a lot of restraint!)

Once using the product, I found it very unfriendly. Nearly non-existent help files. Very tedious navigation, and there is no place to see all the items together in a simple summary, with values. I think they omit such display because it might give you the idea that - hey! - I could do this myself on a spreadsheet!

The ONLY value to this program is it gives you some clout in an audit. ("I donno what that item was worth, so I asked the software...") Even so - when they guarantee to increase your deductions by $300 - it's easy to see how. They say they get their values from EBay. Maybe so, but if people have stuff in good enuf condition to sell on EBay, maybe they do so rather than carting it off to the Goodwill. Bottom line - half the values of what this software told me my old junk was worth were probably MORE THAN WHAT I PAID NEW!! I suppose the IRS doesn't know that, but I do. The values assigned by this software are literally fraudulent in my case. I will use them, but if push comes to shove and the IRS comes calling - I will admit that there is no way the values were realistic.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: SUPPORT IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE POOR PRODUCT
Review: This product crashed my PC when I tried to start after a truly dramatic install (it sounded as if my PC's drive was a jet engine warming up). Support was the opposite of helpful. I cannot stress how awful this application is. Intuit should be ashamed of the quality of its product and its non-support. I am also going to return both TurboTax and State TurboTax without trying to install those, based on the performance of ItsDeductible. H&R Block, here I come!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: This product has a number of bugs and causes a lot of problems with Windows. It is not worth what you save. There is a promise that they will refund your money if you don't save $300. I saved $288 with the product, and they told me they can only give refunds within 60 days of purchase. This does not work if you want to use the product for contributions throughout the year, since you don't find out how much you save until you do your tax return at the end of the year. This "guarantee" is a joke.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Saves taxes by getting fair value
Review: This program does what it is supposed to do, which is determine a fair value (for income tax deduction purposes) of items you donate.

While it did not have ALL the items I donated in its database, the items it did have were documented as much higher values than I would have estimated. Very simply, if you're in a 25% marginal tax bracket, every $100 of increased value for your donations translates to $25 reduction in your pocket. If you have donated a substantial amount of used goods to charities, and (as I did) were conservative in setting values for those goods, this program will EASILY save you the price of the software.

It's relatively easy to use, as well.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Waste of Money
Review: This software was a waste of money! I was under the impression that it would provide me with fair market values for items - I never did locate that information!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It's Deductible Problem
Review: This was an excellent program at one time. This program now has a serious glitch in version 7 which renders the progam inoperable for non-cash donations, usually the most common ones made. It is missing a file "WSNonCash.pdf". I found this on two disks each from a different source, one directly from Intuit and the other purchased from a retail outlet. I would not purchase this product until there is some announcement that the problem has been fixed. Intuit is supposed to send me a new disk which I just discovered is on backorder. Maybe this means they are fixing the program.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A good idea, but weak execution
Review: This was my first (probably last) time using ItsDeductible. One rude surprise was that you can't export the data to TurboTax for the Web, which is what I'm using. So after all that painstaking data entry into ID, I have to do it all over again in TTFTW. I have sent a suggestion to Intuit, hopefully they'll get that fixed for next year.

This product would be more useful if it was purchased at the beginning of the year, and you stored all of your donations in it as you go. Instead, I'm spending a half day transferring handwritten notes on receipts into the software... I'm thinking I will use a spreadsheet for that this year, and save the cost of this program.

Another beef is that there are numerous reports shown, but there are only really two! Cheesy.

So, as a learning experience: keep digital photos of your donations, tie them to your data (a spreadsheet or this software), make reasonable estimates on the Fair Market Values, and you will be in good shape in case of an audit. The government doesn't allow much in the way of deductions to the average tax payer, so take advantage of what you can!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 5+ years of using Turbo Tax and
Review: thought I'd try this since I clear the closet out all the time.

1st problem: Turbo Tax 2003 WILL NOT import the data, which is a MAJOR problem since, duh, that's why I got it. 2nd problem: if the program doesn't do a task, just leave it off the drop-down menus! They do this tease making you think they have all the values, well, they don't. But it makes you feel like an idiot/loser because you bought the basement version. 3rd problem: if you're a "letter-of-the-law-paranoid-tax-payer" like myself, reading the IRS instructions says you have to have records of the original value/purchase, yeah right!

It's pretty cheesy altogether. I wouldn't blow the 20 on this one. Just get the 8283 form and look it all up on ebay, since that's what I had to do anyway without their upgraded "deluxe" version. This one's pretty worthless, except for filling out the form for you (hence the 2nd star). No tech support ANYWHERE for it either since the company just changed hands. I'm sending this one back!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: Turbo Tax is perhaps my favorite software product of all time; its value-to-cost ratio is exceptionally high. Its Deductible, however, occupies the other end of the spectrum. While the product has some worthwhile features, these are completely overshadowed by: i) the abysmal interface with Turbo Tax; ii) the numerous technical glitches associated with downloading the product and (eventually) getting it to work; and iii) the poor technical support. I made the mistake of purchasing the "deluxe" version, which purports to provide fair market values for electronic items. I have yet to locate this database. I have since tried (numerous times) to download the databse from Intuit's website, but have been unsuccessful at that as well.

Bottom line: don't aggravate yourself - stay away from this product.


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