Just about anything that relieves the pain of taxes is a welcome thing. H&R Block's TaxCut Premium Home & Business 2003 can't cure that desolate feeling in your wallet, but it's a powerful tool for calculating and filing federal and state returns and worthy competition for Intuit's TurboTax. This year's edition offers stronger assistance and advice and does a better job of walking you through the filing process. It also offers strong ties with H&R Block's tax services.
Not Just By the Numbers
The TaxCut 2003 programs are available either as boxed CDs or downloads, the latter lacking some multimedia features of their retail cousins. Pricing starts at $15 for the Standard Edition, with the Deluxe package ($25) bundling one state return and one free electronic (federal) filing.
TaxCut Premium 2003 ($40) adds handy stock-options, capital-gains, depreciation, business-expense, and rental-property assistants as well as one phone or e-mail help session with an H&R Block tax professional. We sampled the Premium Home & Business edition ($50), which helps small-business proprietors prepare Forms W-2 and 1099 plus others for corporations (1120 and 1120S), partnerships (1065), nonprofits (990), and payroll returns (940 and 941). Across the board, TaxCut's prices slightly undercut archrival TurboTax.
H&R Block's software has also caught up with its rival's formerly easier and more thorough interview; TaxCut's understandable questions walk you through the complex tax-preparation process, and intuitive screens instead of cryptic electronic tax forms for entering your financial data. The language is plain English, not legalese or bookkeeper-speak.
Helpful tax advice is served up at every turn. New "Plain Talk Tax Tips" dispense useful hints on subjects such as saver's credit, bunching deductions, overlooked deductions, and handling tip income or student-loan interest. While TaxCut's advice is impressive, TurboTax sometimes offers more detail, particularly when it comes to more obscure tax topics.
Other new features address specific tax issues. There's a calculator for estimating alternative minimum tax, and another that shows how to claim a dependent college student and handle tuition expenses. You'll also find modules for applying investment income and offering guidance on capital-loss carryovers and wash sales. A tax-payment planner estimates your 2004 taxes and recommended withholdings.
The Home & Business interview handles Schedule C and the abovementioned forms, as well as offering assistance on topics such as depreciation, business expenses, and estates. There's also an assistant that helps determine whether your home office qualifies as a tax writeoff, as well as business FAQs, a depreciation calculator, and a helpful planner that projects business earnings and tax liabilities over the next three years.
TaxCut also helps you determine taxes on vacation homes and rentals and make the choice between a Roth and traditional IRA. The program also prepares a personalized tax-planning report that shows the effects of tax-law changes on your return and offers advice based on your occupation and financial situation.
In addition to video tutorials that explain many tax concepts, the CD-ROM version offers a library of useful publications from the Kiplinger's press, including Buying and Selling a Home, Retire Worry-Free, and Guide to Investing Success. This year, e-filers can use a credit card to pay any balance due the IRS -- but note that if you do, you'll be charged an extra 2.49-percent "convenience" fee.
Easier to Use
I had no problems installing TaxCut Premium; the program made it easy to jump right into the interview and provided clear and easy options for importing financial data from Quicken. I found the interview to be clear and fairly easy to understand (we are, after all, talking about taxes), and enjoyed the new option that let me jump around the interview without plodding through steps in order.
TaxCut 2003 sports a redesigned interface that is more intuitive and easier to use. In particular, the new Topic Navigator gives you a better idea of where you are in the filing process and helps you get from one part of the return to another -- for example, if you're near the end of the preparation process and discover a deduction you forgot to enter earlier, it's easy to go back and make the change. New "Get Ready" screens help prepare you for each section of your return by telling you what financial information and documentation you'll need to complete that section.
If you have further questions, H&R Block lets you consult with one of its staffers via phone or e-mail through the Ask a Tax Advisor service, included free (with a mail-in rebate) for TaxCut Premium users and priced at $20 for Standard and Deluxe filers. H&R Block's Professional Review service offers an expert reading of your return at extra cost.
In addition to importing personal financial and tax data from Quicken, TaxCut also works with Microsoft Money, as well as other programs that support the .TXF file format. The program also downloads data from H&R Block's DeductionPro software which tracks charitable deductions, and from last year's versions of TaxCut and TurboTax.
TaxCut offers excellent technical support, though limited to software issues instead of advice on tax laws. Free support is available via phone, e-mail, and online chat from 8 a.m. through 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. through 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday, and H&R Block promises to answer all e-mail queries within 48 hours (my test questions were answered in only a fraction of that time, though of course this was well before the crunch time of late March and early April). Priority phone support is offered for $10 per call.
In short, the TaxCut 2003 programs are first-class choices for you hardy souls who want to do your own taxes, although -- as with TurboTax -- the Home & Business edition is underpowered for any but the smallest businesses.
