Program is good up to a point. I expected a user friendly experience for working in more than 4 states. Program is limited to entering 4 states. More than 4 have to be entered with duplicate W2s - doesn't indicate that anywhere. Help feature is terrible - had to call to get this direction. May not be different with other programs - but lack of clarity and lack of easy support made it way too difficult.
I have been using this product for over 20 years even way back when it was branded as Taxcut. It is much more intuitive and comprehensive than Turbo Tax even after all these years. If you take the time to learn how to navigate through the various sections of the program using the tabs at the top of the page, it then becomes very easy to directly “go to” any section at any time to change or review your input.
I would have given this five stars except for 2 things. I could have saved a lot of time and effort if they had simply provided a list of possible deductions and provided the threshold that had to be exceeded in order to make itemizing worthwhile. A quick ballpark figure of my total medical and other deductions could have saved me a lot of time with the right tax explanations at the start of the process. My only other concern is that you have to pay extra to file State Taxes electronically and you have to say yes to electronic filing before you get to a page that gives you the option to only file the Federal taxes electronically.
Ease of program use... BUT had difficulty with activation code and my charge card was billed 19.95 three (3) times to accomplish a successful transmission for the state transmission. I will dispute but leaves a bad taste this year... time is valuable.
I have used H&R Block Tax software for several years and find it much better than the competitor. But with the tax code changes, I did have to contact customer service with questions. Would suggest adding explanations about self direct IRAs and the standard deduction bonus for over 65.