what's a great tax software program?

[ThurzNite]

I'm thinking about getting Turbo Tax. Is there anything else out there that's better? I'm 20 and it'll be my first time filing for myself.
Jay

 

[Sacotool]

I used Turbo-Tax last year and it worked fine

 

[squirrel dog]

TT is as good as the rest,just remember garbage in garbage out.You can make your refund as large as your imagination,but the IRS has NO sense of humor.I went to a cpa 4 years ago,best thing I ever did for taxes.I am 49 this Nov. and my Wife has a realestate co.The last few years b4 going to a cpa were tax hell for me.Good luck.

 

[kranky]

squirrel dog has a good point. People with complex situations probably should not use tax software unless they also know the tax regulations very well.

I'm assuming (dangerous, I know) that at age 20 you have a fairly simple tax situation. If you only have W-2s for income, and aren't itemizing deductions, you might be able to use the EZ form, and in that case you don't need to buy any software. Do you think you'll have a more complicated tax return?

 

[ThurzNite]

Nothing complicated here. No investments. No car. Just worked on campus to earn a lil cash to pay for bills. I'm not anticipating anything big. I thought it'd be a good idea to learn how to do them now while it's simple.
I read TT's site and saw that it's supposed to work well with Quicken. Is it a good idea to start using Quicken too?

 

[Tripleshot]

I use Kiplingers Tax Cut and have for years. It is developed by Block Financial. They keep up on the IRS laws pretty well and always have free updates. The program does do small bussiness/home business just fine,however,anyone who has a large business with many employees and other considerations should definatly use the services of a qualified tax accountant or CPA.

My $.02

 

[kranky]

You're right, learn about them now while it's simple. If you qualify for the 1040EZ form, you can literally do your taxes by hand in under 10 minutes - without software.

I use both TurboTax and Quicken, and while it's possible to feed the Quicken data into TT, I don't. If you want to do that, you have to enter a LOT of data into Quicken, and make sure each account has the proper tax status assigned. For me that was too much work. You might find it useful, though, to learn how to do it.

It will actually be easier to do it by hand than with TT, since you'll spend a lot of time in TT clicking "No" to dozens of questions it will ask you about your tax situation.

One advantage to learning how to do simple returns by hand: when I was in school, I offered to do other students' returns for $5 or $10 (depending on how much I liked them). Of course, they didn't have a 1040EZ form at that time. As long as they only had W-2s, and bank interest income, I'd do it. I learned to take the information with me back to the dorm because some people didn't like paying me $5 for 5 minutes of work when I did it in front of them.