No death preparing taxes

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1998 by Victoria Hall Smith

TAX
PREPARATION
SOFTWARE            Turbo Tax for Business Excellent

Requirements        WIN/MAC 16MB of RAM, 21MB to 46MB of
                    hard-disk space, CD-ROM or floppy drive,
                    modem for electronic filing
Est. Street Price   $70 (READER SERVICE 114)
Manufacturer        Intuit, 800-446-8848, www.intuit.com

RATINGS

   The one-to-four-star ratings     Excellent
      are based on performance,
       features, setup, ease of     Good

learning and use, availability,     Fair
             warranty, support,
      documentation, and price.     Poor

Don't waste another minute worrying about your small-business taxes. Whether you're a sole proprietor, corporation, or partnership, TurboTax for Business makes quick work of this otherwise teeth-gnashing chore. With step-by-step instructions, multimedia tutorials, and online information, you'll have everything you need to prepare, review, and submit your return.

If you use Quicken, QuickBooks, or any other popular financial package, you start by importing your year-end totals into TurboTax for Business. The program then uses those numbers to complete most of the tax preparation for you. An almost overwhelming library of online help is just a mouse click away when you're answering TurboTax's queries about your income and expenses.

More than 60 videos were available to explain all of our options on issues as common as calculating home-office allowances and as complex as the MACRS depreciation system. TurboTax's own Tax-Advisor already has the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act down pat, and as an added bonus, the program even alerted us to new laws affecting our business.

If you don't use a financial package, TurboTax still helps. With the Easy-Step Interview process, we entered our information into the portions of the tax forms relevant to our business. If you're eligible to file electronically--TurboTax determines that too--the fee is just $9.95. The new Tax Report feature analyzed our completed return and outlined a detailed plan for next year, TurboTax for Business is so thorough and helpful we don't even mind thinking about next year.