I have used H & R Block software for over 5 years. I have ran our own business for several years and they make it simple to file your taxes yourself by following step by step instructions. They walk you through the process and ask questions like you were in an office with a tax expert.
Pros: Easy to prepare, Maximizes refund, Easy to import documents, Fast
Premium software is very easy to work with, and is quite self-explanatory. The preliminary questions make things quite simple to follow. The depreciation methods allowed seem to be more than other software packages that I have used. The nicest feature that they have is being able to compare the prior years return to the current return preparation.
The 'Premium' version is supposed to handle the importing of stock trades. It imported the data from my E-Trade account pretty easily, but then it wanted me to confirm each trade separately (there were over 300). Instead of a simple spreadsheet to review I had to click on each one on a separate screen. After each screen it would do some kind of recalculating where the cursor would spin and I had to wait about 30 seconds, and after 3 or 4 of these stock trade screens the whole program would crash and I had to restart the program. It took me over 4 hours to tediously go through this process to confirm all of my trades. Awful!
Pros: Maximizes refund
Cons: Time consuming, Hard to prepare, Hard to import documents