Rating: 
Summary: Inferior to Turbotax
Review: As someone who wanted to punish Intuit for their unacceptable usage of Spyware (only on the Windows version, not mac) I purchased Taxcut Platinum for the Mac last week and tested it out. So it is with great disappointment that I inform prospective users that it is inferior in many ways to Turbotax, neither of which I had ever tried to use before. There are 4 reasons it should not be purchased by you: -it is buggy and doesnt have a stable "feel", as the dropdowns sometimes shimmer and act strangely - there is a known bug that it will not print to HP laserjet printers. If you have an HP printer, there is no workaround. - a bug cropped up when after entering my data, it showed a significant refund. I then u/l the update, and the refund inexplicably became an amount owed. H&R could not explan this, and re-installing the app from scratch had no effect. I should add that when i ran Turbotax, it showed the same exact refund I originally received with Taxcut, so there must be some calculation bug involved, hardly a confidence-inspriring event. - it is not as straightforward an interview process (where the software guides you along thru the entry of items) After dealing with these problems, I bought Turbotax locally and i hate to say it, but it is vastly superior to Taxcut. As i said above, I would have preferred to support with my dollars the company more interested in helping you than placing something as despicable as spyware on your computer, but, for me, i cannot recommend it at this time. If the above deficiencies are repaired, I will eagerly buy another copy of Taxcut next year.
Rating:
Summary: Who knew that lying on your taxes was ok with TaxCut?
Review: First of all, even with the help of the tech support people I could not get the help system to install or function. My job is computer consulting and systems builds and it just didn't happen. On top of that I (on the recommendation of the TaxCut support team) had to put down that I had $1 in land ownership, even though I have none. The reason is that one field had to be greater than another, they couldn't both be 0. So I had to lie and say I had $1 in land so the software would submit my taxes. I was frustrated with TurboTax, but now it seems like the best software in the world, I will never, ever, try TaxCut again even if it is given to me for free.
Rating: 
Summary: Does not import online financial information
Review: For me, one of the main advantages to using an electronic tax program is the ability to download my tax information directly from my financial institutions' websites. Being able to directly import w-2s, 1099s, etc. saves an incredible amount of work and helps ensure accuracy. TaxCut is unable to perform this function. You are able to import financial information from other financial programs you may have already installed on your computer, but, barring this, you must enter all information by hand. I would not recommend TaxCut if you invest with a financial institution that allows you to download your tax forms, especially if you have a lot of transactions that need to be recorded on your taxes. TurboTax has a list of finanical institutions that allow electronic transfer of information. Do not be fooled by TaxCut's packaging or website. Though there are implications that TaxCut does everything that TurboTax does, and that electronic transfer of tax information is possible, it is not. I spent a good bit of time searching around TaxCut's help section, to no avail. Eventually I called customer support. I thought it was a pretty straight-forward question that I asked ("Am I able to download directly into TaxCut the tax information from my financial institution's website?"). Initially, the customer service rep read verbatim the help page I had already reached. This page dealt with importing tax info from other programs on your computer. Eventually the customer service rep had to go get help, and finally explained to me that TaxCut does not, in fact, allow you to download tax info directly into the program. What a frustrating situation. TurboTax is reputedly installing spyware on people's computers (though, apparently, not the Mac Version), and, thus, is acting unethically and should not be supported. TaxCut, though, is simply not as useful or good a product for those of us who want to actually use this new-fangled 'internet' thing. Anybody out there know of any third options?
Rating:
Summary: Bad tax software
Review: I bought Taxcut Platinum this year, because I had a large amount of stock transactions to import from Money 2002, and I gathered that Taxcut would work best with Money. I have generally used Turbotax until this year and wish I had continued to do so. Taxcut would not even get my W2's imported! It claimed that my employer was not on their list. Well, Turbotax On The Web easily found both my W-2's and imported them . How about them apples? Next, the stock transaction import from Money was OK. But it seemed to have got the dates wrong. SO now, I had to go through 890 transactions line by line to make sure the dates were right. And that Gainskeeper offer on the cover of Taxcut - well, you get access to Gainskeeper for 10 transactions, before you have to shell out some real dough. Talk about promising something without qualifying it. I wish the packaging had told me about the 10 transaction limit and I didnt have to find out after I opened the box. Anyway, no more taxcut for me from this year on. I'll stick to Turbotax.
Rating:
Summary: Mac Users Be Aware
Review: I have a fairly simple tax needs. I am switching from TurboTax ( which was out of stock ) to TaxCut, which claims it can transfer your data from last year's TurboTax forms. But this capability dosen't come in the box, it comes in the form of a 25 Megabyte download, and I don't have DSL, so I gave up on that and entered everything over again. When I was ready to do my state taxes, I discovered that the California forms were not going to be available until February 28th! None of the Federal Updates ( strongly suggested ) are available yet for Mac, probably not until late Feb! I'm doing my taxes with a pen and ink and returning this software.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Fear this Taxing Time of Year
Review: I have been preparing my family's tax returns for years. I figure I haved saved us hundreds of dollars in accountant fees (not to mention the money I did not have to pay in taxes). For a few years I used Turbo Tax for Mac (Intuit), but it angered me last year that I had to pay more for a Mac platform. So I went with TaxCut for Mac (Block). I found it even better and easier to use that TurboTax. And last year the price was the same for both Mac and Windows.
The program allowed me to breeze through the preparation and all the long forms (A,B,C,D,etc.etc.) with such ease that I prepared my mother's, children's and mother-in-law's also.
I now see that the price of TaxCut for Mac (Platinium) is more that the Windows. That stinks. But since I now have no choice in price, I will again go with TaxCut, and just deduct the cost of it on next year's return...
Rating:
Summary: Do NOT BUY TAXCUT!
Review: I have been wasting my time with downloads that don't download, updates that aren't updated and "help desk" representatives who aren't helpful for nearly 2 months now. In fact, I'm writing this while on hold with tech support, which is NOT a toll-free number. They can't even walk me through an uninstall. This has been a nightmare. I'm going to try to get my money back and do this the old fashioned way. So much for getting my taxes done early...thanks to this worthless product, I'm going to be cramming at the last minute.
Rating:
Summary: TaxCut is window-ware
Review: I have used TurboTax for Mac since it was MacInTax, but I tried TaxCut this year because of Intuit's spy-ware policy. This was a mistake!
Here is what TaxCut can't do:
- Only a single form can be viewed at a time.
- It requires a convoluted process to view associated documents - not like the quick zoom feature on TurboTax.
- The interface is not Mac-like and not intuitive; it is like a windows program
- The Help center does not work. Clicking on hyperlinked text to get answers to specific listed questions invariably yields the message "No help topics available."
- The only way to print a state form is through the interview. Using the cmd-P gets the print menu but even selecting all forms gets only the federal ones. Overall, this is poorly designed software.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I made the mistake of swapping from TurboTax. The Tax Cut software does not give me a warm comfortable feeling that it has done everything properly. The questionaire is obtuse, the search for help does not work with my browsers. The website for tax cut is useless. The Federal update won't download, neither will the State . Only 1 of two emails has been responded to by tech support. (I never had a problem before, been doing my taxes on my Mac since 1995) Absolutely P'O'd at Tax time... just what I needed.
Rating:
Summary: TOO TAXING FOR ME
Review: I'll admit it, I have an old PowerMac 7600 with OS 9.1. Spent 6+ hours doing my taxes. The download update feature was anightmare, the instructions didn't make sense at all and it took forever to download 17.1 MB. I don't know if it had to do with IE 5.0 or what. Some of my downloads took 45 minutes and then I got an error. However, I did get it to work I see some other users had download issues as well. Once I got into entering my data it wasn't so bad and I was able to print my return on an HP inkjet. Between this and TurboTax, pick your poison I guess. I didn't want to e-file, God forbid. I think next year, I'll spend the extra 100 bucks and have a tax professional/accountant do them. At least I know it will be done right.
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