I think the most serious deficiency of the program is that it does not organize a couple's data so as to make a recommendation about filing singly or jointly.
Speaking from experience of NY (including NYC UBT and MCTMT), NJ (non-resident) and OH returns, they really cut corners on programming the state modules; the state returns are impossible to complete within TurboTax without reference to state websites and/or manually completing some forms.
What's great about it: Helps organize data
What's not so great: Struggles with complex situations
Pros: My job status changed this year (switched jobs, lost a job, got a raise or promotion), I bought or sold investments
I am always amazed at how the program guides you along and assists where you get stuck. I love the prompts and explanations. If I can get out of my own way the process would be easier still. Thanks.
I actually love TurboTax, but I feel like your help functions have degraded over the years. See my comment in the Cons section.
I am the parent of a college student, and I had a heck of a time figuring out how to complete the Student Information Worksheet. I felt the Help was spotty at best, and ambiguous at worst. What, in fact, does Part VIII (QTP or 529 Plan) line 3 mean "Qualified Higher Education Expenses applied to QTP distributions?" I would be happy to help (and grateful to understand) TurboTax work on this section to make it more usable and understandable.
Sincerely, Laurel Garland
What's great about it: I make a single change and it is updated throughout all my tax return!
What's not so great: Help Center NEVER takes me to what I am working on at the moment. Kind of useless.
When the economy crashed in 2008 I started using turbo tax and cut my accountant out of the picture to save money. This year my wife and i had a baby and using turbo tax to get our refund was so simple. Thank You Turbo Tax!
The software is very easy to use, step by step instructions. My entire family uses Turbo Tax, for personal and business taxes. It's a reputable product within the Tax Filing community. They keep me coming back.
What's great about it: Real easy to use even when doing business taxes
What's not so great: If you have to go back for self review it can be challenging
I've used TurboTax for over 10 years now, and it continues to make most things simple.
But even with the business version, it doesn't make difficult things as easy as it should. Both with the 2012 and 2013 versions, it fails with 8 digit numbers. Dealing with spreads that expire in the money, even a 5 digit profit on an individual trade might end up with an 8 digit value as the purchase and/or selling price.
It did daily well with a small business, though could have made retirement plans more straightforward by giving more info about the plans and letting the maximize button give a value immediately instead of several screens later.
Converting a personal home to a rental was a little sketchy, especially in our situation of having the home vacant for a couple years. In the end I made the right choices, but figuring out the basis didn't give as many details as it should have.
Finally, personal deductions were a little sketchy, since you put things for both deductions and exemptions in the same area. If they were split off, and a countdown given for switching from the standard deduction to itemizing, we would have known this year to not bother putting in our donations. Instead, my wife spent 2 hrs putting them into its deductible, only for me to tell her later that this year we were using the standard deduction.
It's still pretty good, but this year I had the addition of the business and rental info, and things didn't seem as good as they should have been. With the budget that Intuit has, I'd like to see them do better here.
What's great about it: Easy things easy, and good questions on more complicated stuff
What's not so great: Fails on 8 digit numbers, not enough detail in info boxes
Pros: My job status changed this year (switched jobs, lost a job, got a raise or promotion), I bought or sold investments