Why I buy this one ?
- Tax preparation software with step-by-step guidance and free electronic filing
- Help and advice for investments, Schedule C businesses, and rental property
- Extra guidance on business asset depreciation and home-office deductions
- Assistance with reporting stocks, bonds, and mutual funds
- Maximize 401(k) contributions without decreasing take-home pay

barbjewels from CA, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $79.98 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Easy to use", Even though no one is going to be buying this version (2004), I decided to review it anyway (reviewing all items I've ever purchased/used).

Unlike the current version (2007) of TurboTax, this one worked flawlessly. It installed quickly and was not a resource hog. Using it was very easy. Just answered the questions, plugged in the numbers and it did all the work. It was a bit of a pain to manually enter all my stock trades as I was an active trader at the time. Still, it calculated everything when I was done and I was able to efile my taxes quickly.

I had no real complaints.

"Petrified of taxes--TurboTax helped me through", This last year was my first year of filing taxes for a rental, a sole-proprietorship, and the various small jobs I'd held, plus my husband's new job. It was a potential nightmare and I spent several restless nights thinking about it. Under recommendations from a bookkeeper friend, I bought TurboTax. It was great and I was able to get a significant return, which made the time it took to work through the sessions more than worth it. I finished my taxes in about four days, and for anyone with several PT jobs or potential complications, I'd recommend setting aside a couple hours a day--TT allows you to stop any session at any point and save the data, which lets you go back and proofread or reenter data as you wish. I could have finished my taxes without TT, but I highly doubt I would have saved much. TT's deduction questionaires. I can't compare it to earlier versions, since this is my first year using it, but I was very pleased and I think that if you have several different sources of income, TT really helps you organize. In terms of user-friendliness, I think it was fairly straightforward. I used the Help menu a lot and was able to turn on and off the questionaire when I wanted to. If you are new to taxes or TT, then I'd recommend working through it over a period of a week or so, just to verify all your information and think about possible deductions that you might be missing. Because of TT, I am now organizing all my receipts for my businesses in the categories that it suggested for deductions and feel fairly confident about next year's tax season.

"Intuit Customer Support Lacking", Received TurboTax Premier disc from Amazon. During installation, kept getting different installation errors. Intuit website posted SEVERAL options as work-arounds. Spent too much time trying to fix what ended up being a defective disc. On-line chat w/ Intuit rep was frustrating, at best. Intuit would not ship replacment disc direct since Amazon is not an "authorized" seller. Amazon shipped replacement disc (took too many days, Amazon).
Response on Intuit's website about TurboTax completely unacceptable. Defective product and not ready for market. Have used TT for 15 years - won't be using it next year.


"turbo tax premier 2004", Bummed I couldn't find the home and business (guess their not making it anymore) This program wouldn't allow me to import information from previous years. I've always been able to transfer from last years Turbo tax home and business forms. I had to re-type everything manually. No prompt to do it and when I went to the pull down menu I couldn't prompt it to import data. Not user friendly, it used to be better.

"Not perfect, but gets the job done", This was my first year doing taxes for myself. I've always been skeptical about using software to get them done, so I usually pay too much to a CPA to do them for me. After a lot of encouragement from friends I decided to give this a try. Other than some ESPP sales, my return was pretty simple. I bought the Premier version.

What I liked:

- Nice interview process. Of course, it helped that I had prior year returns that had been prepared by a professional, so I kind of knew what the questions meant.
- Easy import of W2 and 1099 information.
- A check to make sure the return contained no errors.
- Online support from Intuit was very prompt.

Some things I would have liked to see:

- There's a screen where it tells you how much you can contribute to a Roth IRA, but it doesn't put the information on the instruction sheet when you print the return for filing. That would be useful.

Bugs that I encountered:

Basically lots of printing-related bugs.
- When I tried to print from the file->print menu, and asked it to print a return for filing, it only printed the federal return. I had to go to the "print" tab and print return for filing to PDF, and then it printed both federal and state.
- I had the same problem when using the file->print menu to print a copy of the returns and worksheets for personal records. So I just printed the federal portion using this.
- The method for printing the copy for records (including worksheets) to pdf was not as straightforward as when printing the return for filing. I couldn't figure it out so I used Intuit's online support. However, even thought I followed the instructions from them, I found that it did not print all of the worksheets. I contacted them about this and was told to just print to paper. So I have to live without a pdf copy of my return containing all the worksheets.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Frustrating", Using TurboTax Premier for Mac was frustrating. First, the program imported my information from Quicken, but the values did not match up with what the federal government was looking for, so I had to reenter everything. The program did not import my stock sales, which was one of the most time consuming aspects of my tax return.

Big complaint #1: The program frequently does not remember what you entered when you go back to edit an entry, such as business expense details or stock sale details. Just to make a small change you have to reenter a lot of information.

Big complaint #2: The program does not calculate stock wash sales correctly. Vanguard calculated it correctly on their form, and I was able to make the adjustment in the program. However, because of complaint #1, when I edited the wash sale, the wash sale flag got reset back to a regular sale, but there was no visual indicator that this changed. The flag is only visible in one of these obscure helper forms buried deep inside the program. I did not notice the error until after I submitted the return, so I will have to mail in an amended return.

The program has numerous other usability problems. I doubt that many people who lack significant computer skills would be able to fill out anything more than the most basic tax return using this program. For people submitting basic tax returns, you can do this electronically for free by going through the IRS Web site. The income restrictions on free Web filing were apparently lifted this year.

One good thing to say about this program is that it was better than TaxCut was for me last year. The program also looks nice and I got my purchase rebates promptly from Intuit.

Intuit has been in this business for a long time. You would think by now they would have figured out how to write a decent program. I really wish Intuit would improve the quality of their software.


"Grow old finishing your return with this product!!!", Do not buy this product if you have tax schedules beyond the simple EZ forms. I have tried to use this software to handle 4 rental properties (a situation that is suppose to be the purpose for TurboRax Premier). It took over 30 minutes for the program to incorporate last year's tax form data, and then another 15 minutes to save the file. And I am using one of the fastest computers on the market (Macintosh G5 185 GHz 1 GB DDR SDRAM). It crawls through each calculation. I can use a manual calculator and hand enter the information on the forms faster!! I do not know much about computer programmming, but it is clear that this software must have been written for only the simplest of needs.

I had the same problem last year, but hoped that surely the company would have improved things.... but no, it is actually worse this year!


Use at your own risk.....

"Response to VP Bob Meigham: Mortgage interest", Since you automatically ASSUMED the problem is MY FAULT let me give you a little more information:

I did enter my mortgage interest in the right area. I can READ instructions and you apparently did not understand my issue.

And YES I did see the instructions stating "If you had a HOME OFFICE and paid mortgage interest DO NOT enter your payments here. We'll ask for that amount later when we cover your home offices expenses".

Nowhere in my original review did I say I could not deduct mortgage interest for the home daycare. I simply said my problem was that it does not let me PRORATE the interest. When the program asked me for INDIRECT Home office expenses it asks for my entire home mortgage interest, but the IRS themselves and instructions clearly state to prorate this for part year businesses. Which was my case with my wife's home day care (93 days of 2004). TT lets you prorate it here however, the software always overwrites this value with the amount of mortgage interest you claim on Schedule A; you find this out after you are directed to itemized deductions (Schedule A) and TT asks you to enter your deductible mortgage interest for the entire year of 2004. When I type in the deductible mortgage interest here, the TT software then takes this exact amount and puts it back on form 8829 line 10b. In fact ANY value you enter here is carried over to form 8829. The only "calculation" being done here is a "copy and paste". There is no problem with real estate taxes (which I also prorated on form 8829). But for some reason Mortgage interest has issues.

TaxCut does these calculations correctly, why can't TurboTax? Also why can't you admit your software has a bug? IT DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR PART YEAR BUSINESSES WHEN IT ASKS FOR YOUR MORTGAGE INTEREST PERIOD.

I spent 3 hours on the phone yesterday with TT support and we walked through the interview multiple times and we recreated the problem on EVERY occasion. Even the nice lady I was working with AGREED that there is a problem here. Maybe you should spend a day at customer service and walk through customer issues, or better yet try this yourself to see what I am talking about, instead of always assuming the customer is WRONG.

Better yet how about you email me, so I can send you detailed instructions to recreate the problem?

I look forward to your response.

And since we are on the subject of bugs, I found another one an hour ago:

TurboTax gives a home DEPRECIATION credit for a business that started and stopped in 2004. In my case the home day care that my wife had started 1/12/2004 and ended 4/2/2004. I entered this information in the TT interview and TurboTax calculated a home depreciation credit of $119. The IRS contacted me today and told me that I can't claim this credit. Since you will probably ASSUME I did something wrong here too, and that your "perfect" software is doing everything correctly, let me refer to you IRS Publication 946.

On page 6 under EXCEPTED PROPERTY, it states this

"Even if the requirements explained in the preceding discussions are met, you cannot depreciated the following property.

Property placed in service and disposed of in the same year."

Here TurboTax is clearly violating this rule for my situation. This is a bug AND the problem stated earlier is a bug as well; and you will find this out when home business customers come back to you to get their guaranteed reimbursement checks because the IRS audited and fined them.

In my case TaxCut does all calculations correctly and covers all details, so I will use them from now on. On the other hand TurboTax ignores IRS rules and does not handle all of the pertinent details in special situations. I already returned TT to the store and exchanged it for TaxCut. Best tax decision I ever made.


"Reply to Intuit VP re: e-mail responses", Mr Meighan's response that they answer 3700 e-mails/day is bull! Apparently, their idea of a "direct response" is an automated reply that does nothing to adress your individual problem, but suggests generic fixes for simple problems. Me: The state return file downloaded by TT for printing does not include my state return. Them: Make sure your printer is connected, etc! Obviously, an automated reply program matched "printing" and fired off the generic response on resolving print issues. I sent a reply basically asking "what...?" and received another reply from TT that the e-mail address used was not monitored. Yeah, a real "direct response," Mr. Meighan! After more searching on their website, I found that a "hot topic" is that state forms for many states are not available. Their suggested fix, "update TT." I can't find an online update for the Mac. The only action I found which I can take is to call an 800 number to get the update for Mac on CD. I really doubt that will solve the problem because it takes time and $ to burn CDs. I give it slim to no chance that such a CD would have the latest udate that would fix the state tax form problem. I am fed up with treasure hunting for mythical support.

Mr. Meighan's excuse that they "may not have ideal service levels during a few peak days a season" is an understatement. This was the beginning of February! What will happen by April? I agree with the original post. The lack of support is horrible and I strongly suggest that readers avoid this product. P.S. Mr Meighan, you could have a promising career in the tobacco industry!

"TURBOTAX RESPONSE", Disclosure... I am responding on behalf of Intuit TurboTax and wanted to provide some measure of balance to these reviews. My intent is to correct factual errors and leave the subjective comments alone. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and we respect that. You'll also note that I rated TurboTax a 3 (midpoint) because I cannot submit a review and leave it blank. I just wanted everyone to know that I'm not trying to "juice" the review ratings.

1. The claim that TurboTax does not properly handle mortgage interest when claiming a home office deduction is not true. If you follow the interview, TurboTax instructs you to enter your mortgage interest in the Home Office section. TurboTax will then allocate your mortgage interest between the home office and your personal itemized deductions on Schedule A. Same for real estate taxes. Apparently the reviewer entered their mortgage interest in the area that applies specifically to the business expenses (despite instructions stating "If you had a HOME OFFICE and paid mortgage interest DO NOT enter your payments here. We'll ask for that amount later when we cover your home offices expenses.")

2. The comment that you "can't get direct response by e-email" doesn't reflect reality. Today, we are responding to over 3700 emails a day. Customers can submit email requests to us 24x7 on our web site at www.turbotax.com/support (one click from our home page of www.turbotax.com). If your question is not appropriate for email response, TurboTax agents call you back. Additional options for reaching us are also provided on this page. While we may not have ideal service levels during a few peak days a season, they are generally much better than the competition. We acknowledge that we have room to improve and are making improvements.

3. As one reviewer points out, downloading updates can be challenging. There is some truth to this if you are using a firewall, antivirus, anti-spam, ad-blocker orother types of security software programs. These programs are invaluable, but with improper settings they can cause havoc on any program trying to download an update, including TurboTax. Rather than have customers mess with their settings, we encourage customers to disable these programs just for the time they download their update. In most cases, this allows the update to come through.

4. The November release of TurboTax was unable to import some 2003 files created using TaxCut. A quick update fixed that issue. We encourage all customers to check for updates and in fact, the update process is completely automated.

5. One reviewer claims there is no way to enter when an asset was purchased. If this were true, we would not offer TurboTax for sale. TurboTax supports depreciation better than any tax package out there. Depreciation is covered by TurboTax after you enter your other business income and expenses.

TurboTax has over 10 million satisfied customers. As with any software company, we have detractors too, but we are serious about turning them around and doing what is necessary to improve TurboTax for everyone. That's why we review these forums and respond when appropriate.

While these reviews serve a valuable purpose, the real test is the use of our software. TurboTax provides an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose if you want to test drive TurboTax. If you don't like it, simply return it for a refund. (And no, you don't need to talk with a service agent first!)

I hope the above information helps you make a more informed purchase decision!

Bob Meighan
VP, TurboTax