Discussion:Better than taxact?

This was my first year in business officially. I did 10 paid client returns with three being hapless sole proprietors who needed a priest almost as much as an Accountant! :D The rest were: 2 co-worker whose moves and taxes were paid by our company but were incorrectly grossed up the w-2 for deductible expenses, 1 co-worker with international adoption, and the rest were somewhat simple personal returns.

I used Taxact this year and was largely happy. I didn't really like the way that when Taxact opened, it forced you to open up a client's return. You couldn't be in the software without having a return open. Also, TWICE (once on mine and once on a client's return) after I had completed the return I went into it to add a password and the system burped and overwrote the client return (which had been saved previously) with a blank return. The restore failed as well. Luckily, I had a copy of both on a thumb drive. I didn't like the technical support rep's reply that I had 'tried to add a password to an un-named return' so I might switch. I am a single preparer office so no worries about multiple license issues.

However, I only made about $1,300 net income from this tax season so I cannot buy a $4,000 tax package. I simply do not have the volume of returns to justify it.

I bought Taxact Preparer's edition for $120 this year and I can get it again for about $100 as a returning preparer (if I buy by June 30th).

Is there a cost effective alternative to Taxact that you guys are pleased with?

Thanks,

Michael

Michael

Michael

I will not have anywhere near the expenses I had this year....I bought a chair, some reference books, a new copier, etc. so I might just try something new.

I will look at the Drake and Proseries.

Michael

Good point.

I do have some clients who have multistate income on a non-resident basis. I filled out Maryland's return by hand this year for one.

Thanks, Michael

Thanks,

Michael

Tom

It's one of the many companies that resell OrrTax' IntelliTax product. It's a decent product, the big advantage is it's forms mode. Well, price too... Basically with forms based products you just add the form you want as opposed to the interview based products or the worksheet based products where it's hunt and peck to find where the heck that specific software decided to hide the worksheet you need to fill something out.

While that is an advantage for IntelliTax, that's also a disadvantage. There are things where having a worksheet instead of a form would be nice. For example one single office in home worksheet could carry OIH to everywhere it needs to go. Yet, in IntelliTax they have a worksheet for 8829 (used for C only), a worksheet for 2106 (2106 only), and if you need to do an office in home for something else like an F there's no easy way (well, do an 8829 print it out and stick the number to F before deleting the 8829.)

I like it personally, but have had enough experience with it to know all of it's weaknesses and strengths. It wouldn't be a bad idea to combine a product like IntelliTax with a payperreturn higher-end product.

It was difficult to get the hold of all data entry screens in Drake and it is not Form based. So if you need to see where this number is coming from, you have to go back to data entry screen (for me it took little longer than it should have). With proSeries, you just click on the field and it takes you to in-put sheet and field it came from.

Basic does not onclude 1040NR and I get few clients with 1040NR. Drake includes all types of Forms with PPR. Drake's Tech support was great less than 20 seconds wait time! With Proseries it could be from 10 minutes to 40 minutes.

As far as data entry is concern, I liked ProSeries better. But price and tech support wait time Drake. In next couple of months I will decide to see stay with Drake or go back to Proseries.

Lets see how other taxpros feel who switched this year from ProSeries/Lacerte to other software.

IshaqInagpurwala 17:29, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

But I am very annoyed that it doesn’t have all the forms, like 1045 and I have to do it manually. I am also thinking about switching, but price is a deciding factor here since I only had about 30 clients (although I am growing every year), my prices are in the low range and sometimes I don’t charge clients in financial distress. I am going to ask for a Drake demo.