Taxing Software Experiences

Every year I try to publish all the significant gripes I get about tax software before April 15th, in the hopes it will keep some last-minute tax filers from choosing the wrong program. But, except for one short piece we had about H&R Block's TaxCut earlier this year, that proved impossible as the complaints about the 2007 tax-year softwar

Every year I try to publish all the significant gripes I get about tax software before April 15th, in the hopes it will keep some last-minute tax filers from choosing the wrong program. But, except for one short piece we had about H&R Block's TaxCut earlier this year, that proved impossible as the complaints about the 2007 tax-year software flooded in. And it wasn't going to help to weed out the bad apples anyway, because it seemed like just about all of the programs came in for criticism on support, accuracy, or even privacy grounds. So instead, I gave myself an extension and now file this late return on the 2007 tax programs for future reference.

As is the case every year, the largest number of complaints concerned Intuit's TurboTax. "This year TurboTax got my Massachusetts state return flat wrong, and I had to do something that's probably illegal to avoid being cheated out of $60," one reader wrote. "I'm a federal employee under the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which is not under Social Security. My CSRS withholding is shown on my W2 in a different box than Social Security, Medicare, etc. In the past, TurboTax added the amounts in the two boxes for MA returns, so there was no problem. Not this year - it just left out my CSRS deductions. I tried manually adjusting the correct line in the MA form -- no dice. When I tried to e-file the state, TurboTax informed me that MA accepted only the amount shown in the Social Security box for e-filing, which I find hard to believe. I had to change that amount, which is probably illegal, but which I can justify if I ever have to."