Customer Reviews for H&R Block - Tax Software Deluxe + State 2025 PC/Mac [Key Card] - Windows
Customer Rating
4
Generally did a good job.
on March 19, 2019
Posted by: jss1
from Kansas City
Generally, this program did a good job. However when down loading1099-INT, 1099-DIV and 1099-B dat directly from a financial institution such as Schwab, Fidelity, E-trade etc., it was clumsy. The down loaded unsegregated data from multiple different account types i.e. taxable as well as non- taxable accounts, and acconts that are for my dependents (which were 'linked' to my personal accounts at the financial institutions). I then had to go through the full list of downloaded interest, dividend and capital gain data to ferret out the ones that I actually need to include in my tax returns. It would be far easier to have the information downloaded and grouped by the account number, so that I could easily go through the account data and delete the ones that didn't apply to my tax return.account numbers
The software repeatedly reported error-free federal AS WELL AS state returns, but California e-File rejected it three times after hours spent in the online chat (who did his best, even co-browsing the return). Even the help of his supervisor couldn't unravel it. Ended up paper-filing. The Rejection Report from California was really no help and did not sufficiently identify the problem or lead to a resolution. Would not recommend the product to anyone with rental real estate: the product has always been poor in this area and drops the user to filling out all the PAL worksheets, which are necessary, manually. It's the "California Adjustments" portion that's problematic, esp. Passive Activity Losses (even if you really HAVE no CA PAL adjustments to make!!). My Pros and Cons below are based on these difficulties. Otherwise, the product is satisfactory. But I can see why the state product is bundled together with the federal: there wouldn't be sufficient value for money standing by itself, at least not for CA (which is admittedly garbaged up - but that's how most Californians like things).
This year is the first time I used H&R Block for preparing my Fed income tax. I have previously used TaxCut and Turbo Tax which were OK with the exception of Turbo Tax one year that failed to work on my computer. I found the H&R tax program very intuitive and overall easy to use. I will probably use it next year.