This is the 8th year we have used TaxCut to do our taxes and every year I am more impressed with the ease of use and it’s very thorough interview questions with all the updates ready to go.
Pros: Easy to prepare, Maximizes refund, Easy to import documents, Fast
I have used H&R Block software for almost 15 years, it asks all the questions and track brings the information forward from the previous years. It takes a lot of stress out of process.
Pros: Easy to prepare, Maximizes refund, Easy to import documents, Fast
Not enough help information for the federal return, and almost none for the Maryland state return. I also could not find the worksheet that computes federal tax when you have capital gains and qualified dividends, although presumably the HRBlock code has to compute all the entries and go through the same process to compute the tax. (I'd like to understand how it got there, which could also help me better allocate my investments if I understood the computation.)
The only negative is that since we only use the program once a year, you should remind users about the pages have to be slid down to enter all the necessary info for that page. Also there doesn't appear to be a horizontal slider to recenter to page.
Pros: Easy to prepare, Easy to import documents, Fast
We’ve been using this for over fifteen years without a problem. Fairly easy to use and it imports a lot of data from the previous year’s returns automatically. It could be a bit less expensive for state returns.
I was a long time user of another tax software package. About three years ago I switched to H&R and haven't looked back. It's better priced and has all the bells and whistles one could need.