TurboTax Premier Federal Returns 2005 Win/Mac [Old Version]

List Price: $64.95 Discount Price: $40.25

Features:

• Expert advice for all your investments - Stocks, bonds, mutual funds and more
• Comes with extra guidance for Schedule C, to help maximize tax savings
• Use ItsDeductible to accurately value your donated items in compliance with IRS guidelines - saving you hundreds on taxes
• Get the biggest rental deductions possible

Accessories:

NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

Customer Reviews:

Owner [Posted on 2006-03-10]
Never received. Had to cancel order and purchase from a different source. No communication at all from vendor.

A Good Choice For Federal Returns, But A Better Value May Exist [Posted on 2006-03-11]
TurboTax Premier for tax year 2005 is a notable improvement over recent years. Gone are most of the self-aggrandizing promotions and registration issues of recent years; in the place of all the self-promotion, I found the 2005 package to be extremely stable, useful, and generally quite logical. I think the program itself is worth a four star rating, however if you live in a state with state income tax, realize that the state download is not included in this package and will cost an additional amount. For those who must file state tax returns, I recommend "TurboTax Total Tax Solution Premier 2005," which includes a single state tax return download, and is overall a much better value than purchasing this package for federal returns and a state download.

Installing the program was uneventful and straightforward, as was downloading the state product (in my case Minnesota.) Updating the program was likewise a non-issue. I found the interview this year to be more logical and user-friendly than in years past. I have a fairly intricate return, and I had very few issues navigating the interview. The one place that I did have some confusion (cleared up by "Your Income Tax 2006" by J.K. Lasser) was in entering qualified tuition expenses, as the program gives you two separate possibilities to enter them. That is a fairly trivial issue and affects few people, but does point out that there is still room for improvement in the program (especially in the "help" features.) I also have a perpetual question (that is really insignificant, but makes me wonder "What were they thinking?"): why does TurboTax make you enter your phone number, but fails to print it in the correct space on your 1040 (making you print it by hand), yet on the state return it does print it out? These are obviously very minor observations, and in no way detract from my recommendation.

I have tried TaxCut in years past (though I did not do a direct comparison with TaxCut for the 2005 tax year), and while it is cheaper, I still believe that TurboTax is the better value. It is complete (especially the Total Tax Solution Premier program), fairly intuitive, and produces accurate returns as well as very useful worksheets for your records. TurboTax is fairly expensive, but I believe it's worth it. Remember to factor in the cost of the state download when making your purchasing decision.

TurboTax for the 2005 tax year is a marked improvement over years past, and I recommend it for preparation of all but the most mind-bogglingly complex returns. For those, I recommend a CPA.

Federal Taxes for Idiots [Posted on 2006-03-18]
We have used this product for the last three years and find it very easy to prepare our taxes, particularly the section that deals with mutual funds and stocks sales, losses, gains, etc. The program asks you questions and your answers end up in the right forms and/or worksheets, which you can later print or save to a PDF file and, of course, you can e-file, if you so desire.

The only problem we encountered was that when asking questions, if that particular item did not apply to you, it sometimes got into a loop and the only way we found to get around it, was to exit the program and then come back. The program always asks you if you want to save, so you would not loose any of the work already entered.

TurboTax saved me money over TaxCut [Posted on 2006-04-10]
Last year, I got mad at TurboTax. They moved the stock option support I needed into Premium, and I refused to pay the extra money on principle. So this year I bought TaxCut Premium instead. Bad choice! I aborted my return with TaxCut. I bought TurboTax Premium to complete my return. The difference between the two products is compelling.

- TurboTax has much better program Help. TaxCut help is nearly useless.

- TurboTax correctly handled my stock option transactions, something TaxCut did not do. (TaxCut added the proceeds to my income and would not allow me to specify that my employer had already included them in my W-2.) TaxCut support folks couldn't help me, and next level support doesn't work weekends. Boo-hoo.

- TurboTax interview questions were much better. In fact, TurboTax asked me questions that triggered my memory of things to deduct, resulting in a few hundred dollars of additional refund.

Bottom line: TurboTax was easier to use and paid for itself a few times over. It's worth the extra money for a better-quality program.

(I still think TurboTax is overpriced and needs improvement, but it has TaxCut beat all day long!)

Overall, TaxCut is a much lower quality piece of software. TurboTax fe

OK for simple taxes, not up the the job if your taxes have any uncommon entries [Posted on 2006-04-16]
This was my first time using TT. I bought the Premier edition to be able to handle my ESPP, NQSO and ISO options and to compute my AMT which (this is the first year I've been hit by that). BTW, on the topic of company stock plans, I strongly recommend Kaye Thomas' book "Consider Your Options". TT made the process go a little faster except for all the time I spent on online chats and on phone tech support calls to eventually learn that TT could not support my situation without hacking my numbers or moving transations into different categories from where they should really go. More on this below.

As for ESPP, NQSO and ISO handling for the Schedule D, TT provides a relatively easy way to do the computations that I've always done myself in the past. Was it worth the $50+ for the Premier edition? For me, since I've done that before and I feel confident in how to do that, I'd have to honestly say, "no". If you know how to calculate the basis and gains for these transations and you've done it before, all TT will do will make it slightly easier. If you do not know how to do this or would rather not work out the numbers yourself then TT would be good for you in this area.

The biggest problem I had is that I had a wash sale in a previous year involving some ESPP stock and TT Premier was not able to account for this. I was eventually told this by an upper echelon tech guy. He also told me he "couldn't legally" recommend alternatives to solve my problem but that I could try fudging my ESPP input numbers to try to get the right basis result or I could delete the ESPP transation from the ESPP section and log it as a personal stock transaction (I ended up doing the latter). This of course meant that I had to compute all the numbers myself for this transaction, but I had done that for all my transactions to double check TT anyway (it did a perfect job except for it's inability to allow me to adjust my basis because of the previous wash-sale). I probably spent a total of 4 hours waiting for live chat sessions and on the phone to get help on this issue and was disappointed when they eventually said "TT can't handle that." and "This is the first time we've ever heard of this happening." I admit my situation may not be normal, perhaps some might even call it rare, but I was still disappointed with TT"s lack of flexibility here. So if you think your taxes are pretty normal for a given year, TT is nice, but if you have any irregularities, be aware that it might not be flexible enough to handle your situation.

As for AMT (pretty much the SOLE reason I got it) it did just fine though I would have liked better explanations as it walked me through the AMT section of the interview. When it asks me if I have "mining costs" I am pretty sure I can answer "no" but when it starts asking me strange things about "depreciation" I'm left thinking "well... I don't know anything about depreciation and never put anything about depreciation on the rest of my tax form (I don't own my own business) so... I guess I should answer "no", but the help in the AMT interview didn't make me all that confident that I wasn't missing something here. I had read the AMT form and instructions and they left me with similar feelings of doubt. I was hoping TT would do a little more in explaining the requests for information required for the AMT form but it mostly didn't. Still, it gives me some piece of mind to have TT fill out the form (even though it ended up looking just like what I would have done).

As for next year, it will be my first year filing for credit for paying AMT in a previous year. I haven't decided yet whether or not to use TT again. I'll probably look at the AMT credit form and assuming it is simple enough (I expect it to be straightforward) I'll probably just do my taxes by hand as I've always done before.

I gave 3 stars since I think the rating for TT depends on your level of expertise. For me it was more like 1 or 2 stars since I know how to do my taxes by hand and I really was just looking for some confirmation about how to fill out the AMT form. It was worth it for me to do this though I doubt I'd use TT again, though to be fair it's nice to have TT do the math and double check your filing for common errors. For people who are not confident about doing their taxes by hand AND whose taxes are relatively simple, I'm sure they'll like TT.

Click here for more details and discount information...