Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

The problem with comparing software based on the amount of refund it gives you is fatally flawed because you OUGHT to be coming up with a very very similar figure no matter how you do your taxes. Now, if one software's automatic prompts will make you realize you can deduct something that another software's prompts did not lead you to, go plug it back into the other software and check the results.

There are a couple of valid comparisons that I have seen:

1) TurboTax's deduction tracking software will generally give higher market values for noncash donations than TaxCut's DeductionPro because they take comprable value fees from places like eBay while TaxCut takes them from places like thrift stores. Both are valid means of determining a FMV according to the IRS, so if you give a lot of small stuff like clothing away TurboTax's deductions will be better. It's worth noting that both deduction apps are seperate from the main tax programs and you could fill in either apps data with deductions from either deduction tracknig app though the process would be manual.

2) There are several circumstances where the IRS permits various alternative calculation methods for determining tax/deductions/whatever. Pretty much any tax software I have ever used will perform both calculations, compare them and use the more favorible, however it's possible that some software will not or some software will prompt the user for which method to use. In rare circumstances this might make a very large tax difference.

All this being said the other problems with reviews is that the reviewer tends to only approach them with their unique tax needs (generally those of a freelance journalist or a financial professional) -- this does little good for the common customer with their own unique needs.

IMO there is almost no difference in the packages if you are pretty good at trudging through your taxes and know what you can deduct and what you intend to deduct. I have found that TaxCut lets me skip around a lot easier than TurboTax and due to the DRM debacle a few years ago I swore off TurboTax for good. I still believe that even if I were filling in the forms by hand I would still end up with the same figures, so TaxCut gets my money, but I honestly would think about TurboTax for the ease of valuing donations if I had given a lot of noncash items to charity last year, although in my case I only gave large appliances which are a lot easier to valuate.