I always dread tax season because I can’t count beyond my fingers and toes Everyone knows that the earlier you start the better, but somewhow I am always scrambling at the beginning of April. Whether you’re on top of things, or are a procrastinator extraordinaire (like moi), April 15, 2008 will creep up on you faster than your mother-in-law’s birthday.

If you’re not fortunate enough to have a tax professional preparing your taxes this tax season, you may want to check out some of the easy-to-use tax software applications. Preparing taxes with a a pile of receipts, pay stubs, and a blank tax form can be a confusing and frustrating experience. Paying a tax professional to prepare your returns can get extremely expensive, an affordable solution is online tax software, which can guide you through the process of preparing your taxes and offer financial and tax advice.

TurboTax, TaxCut, and TaxAct are the most popular online tax software choices are. Consumer-Advocate.org has reviewed these tax preparation options and will inform you which tax software offers the best value for money and ease of use.

One of the major brands of tax software out there is TurboTax, and its new web application adds an embedded peer support system, Live Community, and a Q&A service that very much resembles Yahoo Answers. They also offer a new Audit Risk Meter, which flags potentials problematic claims like the children of divorced parents. TurboTax had the best navigations of all the tax service software we reviewed. The navigation is intuitive and easy to find, even for beginners. One of the best features of TurboTax is that it groups related items together and asks you to check those that apply to you. This saves you time from having to answer “no” to question after question. TurboTax wil also upload data from previous years when you filed using TurboTax. Submitting your return is easy and the Federal program can upload your data into the State program within minutes. TurboTax reconfigures and recalculates entries instantly comparing different tax scenarios to help you maximize your return and plan for next year. TurboTax can evaluate your 401k contributions and estimate how much you should contribute before it will affect you take home pay and so on. The prices are the same and range from the free edition to the $75 Home and Business for the desktop; the e-filing is included in all. In conclusion, TurboTax is easy to use and can quickly advise you on your future investments and tax strategies

Another popular software product is TaxCut, made by the good people at H&R Block. With TaxCut you don’t need any accounting experience, simply answer the questions the program asks you. If you are unsure of any answer you can always check the extensive help section for guidance. TaxCut automatically checks your return for common errors. TaxCut’s new web applications add help for people in the military who many need to deal with foreign income, combat pay, and moving expenses. The prices range from $15 for the online service to $90 for the Home and Business desktop software. The all include tech support with H&R advisor’s, and they continue to offer free telephone support with a tax adviser for those who are later audited by the IRS. While TurboTax provides a better online service, TaxCut has a better web tax application. Overall TaxCut is an excellent tax product at a low price. The user interface is simple and easy to understand and the help menu is very useful for finding the answers to all tax-related questions.

Some other good software to consider when making a tax software purchase decision is TaxACT, which is recommended for people with relatively simple tax returns. It offers appealing prices and premium features, which even lets you play with “What If?” to get a better idea of how to plan your financial year. The navigation is intuitive and easy to use. Using TaxACT you can quickly jump to different areas of your return or to specific forms, topics or tax help. A unique feature of TaxACT is you can choose between answering tax questions or directly entering data into the forms to complete your returns. The service supports Federal and 43 state electronic filings. An electronic file is free with the service and the State is only $7.95, or you can print and mail your return.

Whichever software you choose, or if you give up and hire a tax professional, get started on it early this year. Too bad I probably won’t take my own advice.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 11:22 pm and is filed under I'd Love To Be a Better Person... Sitting Down. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.