The tax man cometh - 12 tax-preparation software packages - Software Review - includes summary - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, March, 1994 by Stephen L. Nelson

Personal Tax Edge for Windows (and the DOS version) also had a more serious shortcoming we turned up in the course of preparing our fictitious return. It didn't move amounts we input among schedules and forms. For example, examine the $5,000 the Robinsons spent on health insurance: Personal Tax Edge used a worksheet to correctly calculate that 25 percent of this amount is deductible from gross income because John is self-employed. But the program didn't then carry forward the remaining 75 percent, or $3,750, to Schedule A as a medical deduction.

TurboTax for Windows Rating: * * * *

In the Windows category, the real competition was between TaxCut and TurboTax, and TurboTax was the winner: It was a bit slow, but it was the easiest program to use. And even though we did select TaxCut for Windows as an Editors' Pick in January 1994, we were pleasantly surprised to find that refinements to the head start edition of TurboTax for Windows made it this review's Best Buy.

TurboTax for Windows offered the best and most thorough interview feature; completing the Robinsons' tax return required answering a series of questions. The program then used our responses to fill in the appropriate forms.

TurboTax also handled home-office deduction expenses better than any of the other packages. For example, TurboTax automatically moved the remaining home mortgage interest and real estate taxes from John Robinson's Form 8829 to Schedule A as itemized deductions.

FOR MAC

MacinTax Rating: * * * *

MacinTax was the best Macintosh tax program of the two we evaluated. For starters, the program had the most thorough interview-as you answer the questions, it fills in the appropriate tax form or schedule at the bottom of the screen. MacinTax also did the best job moving data among forms and schedules (like its TurboTax counterparts, for example, it remembered to take the unused portion of the Robinsons' home mortgage interest from Form 8829 [Home Office Deduction] and move it to Schedule A as an itemized deduction).

Andrew Tobias' TaxCut 1993 for Macintosh Rating: * * * 1/2

TaxCut for the Macintosh proved to be a solid package. We had no real problems when we put it through its paces preparing the Robinsons' return. We just started the Navigator and answered its questions.

However, what we didn't like was having to reenter some numbers while we were filling in the family's tax return, such as their home mortgage interest and real estate taxes, because the program didn't automatically move them for us. TaxCut's Navigator didn't move as smoothly through the Robinsons' interview as MacinTax did.

FOR DOS

Personal Tax Edge for DOS Rating: * * *

Personal Tax Edge gives three choices for inputting tax data: an interview, a tax records organizer, and the basic onscreen forms approach.

One minor irritation was that the program often expected us to understand more about income tax preparation than we thought was fair. For example, in collecting information about the Robinsons' $5,000 worth of dividend income, we needed to know how many 1099s the Robiusons actually had to record. We felt most people would benefit if the program used a little less tax accounting jargon.