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TaxCut Platinum 2002

TaxCut Platinum 2002

List Price: $39.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: TaxCut for me- I'm a recovered Intuit user!
Review: Add my name to the list of people switching to TaxCut this year because of Intuit's invasive policies. I won't be going back! TaxCut is easy to navigate, easy to enter data into and I found the live person at technical support to be quick to answer and helpful. I am using it in conjunction with two States and they integrate seamlessly. I honestly don't have any complaints about this nice piece of HELPFUL software.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Buggy, Does not do what is promised; Support is useless;
Review: After I have removed some previously entered Schedule D transactions it still prints security name on the printed forms. The same forms printed "not for filing" or displayed on the screen do not have these records, so there is no way to remove this garbage.
Investors/Traders who have wash sales should consider TurboTax Deluxe rather then TaxCut Platinum.
Product integration with GainsKeeper is incomplete. TaxCut is unable to import Wash Sales from GK. Transactions, which do not result in wash sales, are imported correctly.

I have asked TaxCut customer support regarding integration with GainsKeeper. Contrary to product specification they responded that TaxCut can import data only from Quicken/MS Money, but not GK. Response to my other technical question about arranging schedule D transactions in particular order was even more useless...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Unreliable and scary
Review: Being ... off by Intuit's new "protection" system, I decided to try TaxCut this year... Well, now I have a second thought. I ran into so many bugs and inconsistencies in the TaxCut that I am simply scared to submit to the IRS the returns forms generated by it. Examples: 1)It drags a mistake in my address intput from screen to screen even after I corrected it in the address input form. 2) I had to use Google to find the latest update on the H&R' website. 3) It bugged me with request to input the SSN for my "second child" (while I indicated that I have only one). And so on and so forth..
And it still inferior to the TurboTax in terms of functionality and UI convenience. Sometime it seems that this program has been written by the same seasonally hired "tax preparers" who are "working" in the H&R's walk-in offices.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a nightmare!
Review: I had been a user of TurboTax for several years and was very satisfied with the results and ease of use. I had logged on one day to pick up a copy of Turbotax but based upon some of the reviews here I decided to get Taxcut. Big mistake. Taxcut is very buggy and it even locked up when I was first trying to register it online.

I had already calculated my taxes based using my tax info from 2002 and Turbotax deluxe 2001. I figured it should give me a ball park figure since tax laws can't change that much in one year.

At any rate TT estimated I should pay in a small amount. When I entered all the numbers in with Taxcut platinum it showed me as having in pay in almost tens times as much. I re-entered the data several times and it would give me different results but always on the high side. I even completed a brand new form and made sure I had the latest sotware update. It said I had the latest update but still yielded very high info on taxes and it wasn't a consistant number even though my tax info was constant.

Finally after messing around with this for about ten hours I decided I would just uninstall everything and throw the software disk and everything associated with Taxcut in the trash. Hopefully I can wipe this nightmare completely from my memory.

I ordered Turbotax today and I will used that program this year.

Taxcut is not a very user friendly program and in some of the interview questions it was mising a specific line number to get info from. Also, the look and feel of this program is a bit on the edge of being amateur/professional. Very similar to some of the shareware programs you can find where somebody wrote the program from their basement. It may be just a cut above that.

Looking back on some of the reviews of TT the negative on the product had more to do with the activation process rather than how the program performed.

If Taxcut has worked fine for you for years than stick with it but I am never going to touch this program again. I should have know better than to change something that was working fine for me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very user friendly tax software
Review: I have used TaxCut for several years now, and really appreciate its convenience and ease of use. The software works like an interview - you answer a list of questions, and when you are done, your tax return is complete. It picks up the data from prior year returns done on TaxCut, so if you use the program year after year, it gets progressively easier and less time-consuming to prepare your taxes. Clear explanations are provided for every entry, potential problem areas are flagged, and your return is compared with average taxpayer returns in your income bracket so you can see if your deductions etc. are out of line with the norm. The state program for my state is also very simple to use. In my opinion, using TaxCut is far simpler and less stressful than either doing taxes by hand or using a tax preparer.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't buy it!
Review: I just bought Taxcut Platinum for Mac and it doesn't work!! Completely buggy interface. Shuts off and takes me back to the desktop screen. Lost data three times before I gave up. I read the other reviews from this year and am wondering if they are legitimate as I also (too late) just read the reviews on this site for Taxcut 2001 which indicate problems similar to mine. I don't even want to give this product one star but that's the lowest option. Also, 20 minutes on the long distance charge help line with no answer and no answer from the e-mail tech people. Caveat emptor!!! Class action suit anyone???

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I made the switch from TurboTax to TaxCut because of Intuit's copy-protection schemes that treat me like a criminal and make we worry about not having access to my return in the future. I figured TaxCut would be the same as TurboTax or maybe a little better since I never loved TurboTax. However, I found it to be worse. First the good points, it did import my dad from Quicken and last years return fairly well. Now the bad:
1. It had an annoying inconsistency in entering dates. Sometimes it insisted you use 2-digits etc. I think software should be smart enough to figure out the different ways people enter dates, rather than force people enter dates one way.
2. The platinum upgrade is worthless. I got it for the "capital gains assisteant" but that turned out to be nothing more than having you enter you information on multiple screens (interveiew style) rather than one. If you go with TaxCut save the 10 bucks and go with the deluxe or standard editions.
3. It did some to know how to handle my Employee Stock Purchase Plan. It did not ask me about the discount I bought the stock at (which is taxed differently I believe than the capital gains). Since I sold at a loss this did not worry me.
4. It had me enter information many times when it seemed like it should have been smarter. I think I enter my address 4 times - why can't the program figure out that I am not moving?

I am hoping that Intuit treats their customers better so I can go back to TurboTax next year. If not, I am not sure what I will do.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: extra download for update
Review: I purchased TaxCut instead of TurboTax because TurboTax required initialization over the internet to use it. My daughter and I both use the program and TaxCut allows up to 5 family members usage. I DID NOT like the fact that I had to download updates to both this and the State program that took almost an hour to do. Also the State program did not recognize that Harford County has only three incorporated towns and gave me an error message to list my town. I thought it should have been aware of all local information.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Poor support for Macintosh, not as nice as Turbo Tax
Review: I read this years reviews for Turbo Tax and discovered that Turbo Tax was charging $.. more for their Mac Version, which didn't seem fair, so I decided to give Tax Cut a try this year. Big Mistake.

First of all, Tax Cut's Mac State products will not be out till February 28th (you have to really dig deep in their site to discover this). This contradicts other information given by their site and by customer support that indicates it is available now.

Also, at present, the most current (Feb 6th) updated Mac version of the Federal Tax Cut has a bug which prevents you from passing the review (you can not file). The Error indicates you should upgrade to the newest version available mid-January. I just sent this error report in to them last night, so I can only guess when it will be fixed.

Finally, the program is not a nice a product as Turbo Tax is (or at least, as last year's was). The implementation is crude. Video help had decompression problems. But worst of all, every time you double-click a word that you want defined you have to go out to the taxcut.com website to see the result. Please.... How hard would it have been to define these terms within the program? Thank goodness I have a cable modem, always on, connection.

It is really so bad that if my e-mails to TaxCut do not get resolution in a few days, I am going to just eat the cost of this poor product and pay the extra $.. and by this years Turbo Tax for Mac.

I'll update this review and make it more positive if I receive positive resolution, but if I bail, I am going to let this one stand.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very user friendly tax software
Review: I switched to TaxCut from TurboTax because reviews said it was as good as TurboTax but without TurboTax's copy protection scheme. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Entering Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) transactions was much more difficult than last year's TurboTax. The capital gains wizard was almost no help. The online instructions and help were much less helpful, and the help had a much poorer index.

Overall, I would say TaxCut 2003 is about as good as TurboTax was 2-3 years ago. But it is not nearly as easy to use as TurboTax was last year. As much as I dislike TurboTax's copy protection scheme, I will go back to TurboTax next year.


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