H&R Block's Deluxe 2020 Software for tax preparation and filing is one of the best. It has a good guide to take you through the data entry process, and a good review to make sure your information is complete for filing. H&R Block provides good assistance for filers, plus they have their guarantees about support for audits; all at a very reasonable price.
Best value for money but has one serious shortcome
on May 20, 2021
Posted by: Anonymous
from CA
Verified Purchase:Yes
It is my favorite tax software for past ten or so years. It is easy to install, upgrade, use, to import W2 from company payroll web sites, stock trading information from stock brokers etc. (an excellent feature added to this year's TaxCut). The only complaint I have is that it has a serious drawback. It says for the state of CA, if schedule-D (stock transactions) are more than 92 (or so), it cannot efile state tax. Such silly limitation should not even exist. I am sure lots of people have lot more than 92 stock transactions in a year and will run into this limitation.
Pros: Easy to prepare, Easy to import documents, Fast
The software program isn't perfect. For example, I made an incorrect entry that made it believe I was a business owner (I had been given items for free in exchange for evaluating them, and on which I had to pay taxes). When I got to the end, the program was telling me I had to pay a small business tax penalty of some sort, and it wouldn't allow me to go back and change the entry. I had to completely redo everything from the beginning to fix the problem. Often there are boxes that are prechecked that shouldn't be, and if you try to uncheck them, it won't let you. I have used H&R Block's software for 6 years now, and found that it is consistently frustrating. I could do my taxes "by hand", but this program does make it easier and faster, especially when you can import so much info from banks or other software programs.
It does not figure out state when one spouse earns income from a different state. I still don’t know if I did it right. I had to go to the state to figure it out and it is confusing.