A Closer Look at TurboTax

I got a closer look at this year's TurboTax tax-filing software, and the one common thread throughout is Quicken aims to answer as many questions as possible within the program, so you don't have to email or call for support.

"Our goal is to take care of questions within the product. We think it's better to invest in the product to the point where people never have to call us," says Bob Meighan, TurboTax's vice president for consumer advocacy. That's a pretty ambitious goal when taxes are involved.

But, as I mentioned in this previous post, TurboTax and H&R Block's TaxCut have simplified the language and made the movement from one form to the next even more intuitive and smooth in their latest versions.

Here are some of the features I like about TurboTax:

• A "revisit" button after every entry on each form, making it easy to edit figures and other information, even after you've moved on to other forms.

• Up-to-date info on which tax forms are available for download and the dates for when others that are not yet available will be.

• Using TurboTax's Deduction Maximizer, you can click on a button that says "Do I Qualify?" to see if you qualify for a certain deduction and what you would need if don't.

• If you enter a certain figure for a deduction or credit but TurboTax enters a different figure later in the process, you can find out why by clicking on the "Why the Difference?" tab next to the line item.

• If all these info boxes fail to answer all of your questions, a box in the left-hand corner of the screen links to a toll-free number, email, and an online chat option. A bar across the top of the screen has tabs for a "topics list" and "search topics."

Overall, it seems TurboTax has fine-tuned its navigation and made it even easier than in past years to get through all of the forms and enter the correct information. But for more opinions, check out the reader thread on this previous post about the two major hitters in the tax-prep software field, TurboTax and TaxCut. I'll be taking a closer look at TaxCut in an upcoming post.

Note that some readers have suggested a few web-based filing options, all of which offer free e-filing and cost less than their software competitors. We have yet to check them out at our house, but here are the web sites so you can take a look and see what you think:

TaxAct -- Free to try, you pay when you are ready to file, $9.95 for the Online Deluxe version and $15.95 for the Deluxe and State version.
TaxBrain -- $19.95 for federal tax filing and $19.95 for state taxes.
TaxSlayer -- $19.90 to download and for federal and state e-files.
CompleteTax -- $25.95 for federal return and $12.95 for a state return.

Related:

Tick, Tick, Tick: Tax Time Approaches
How To: File Taxes for Free