Tax Software Reviews & Comparisons 2014

Tax Software can help to semi-automate the lengthy and complicated tax filling process. They can help with filing tax, claim refund, IRS audit and much more. Below are some of the leading online tax software compared...

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Things To Consider When Looking At Tax Software

Every year when tax season comes around, Americans across the land scramble around to figure out how to come up with their true tax position, prepare a tax filing document and get the filing done in time. Many work with a limited understanding of the current tax code and will undoubtedly make mistakes that could have been avoided if using one of the many excellent tax filing preparation software applications available today. The decision to go it alone can be an expensive one with possible IRS audits, hiring professionals to assist in such an audit, as well as late taxes and fines, or worse.

When making the decision to use tax preparation software, there are many choices to consider. You will need to research the different applications to see which will suit your needs best. It is not always the most well known or mostly widely advertised tax package that will suit your needs the best, as you will find out when reading some of our carefully prepared tax software reviews.

Free Or Not Free?

There is the occasional genuinely free tax filing software, but most software is what has become known as freemium. This means there is a free version and a premium version (not free).

With some software you are free to use it for free, right up to the point where you wish to actually produce a tax return to e-file it, whereupon you will need to buy one of several versions available in order to release adequate functionality to file your taxes.

Premium Software

The premium versions are often quite similar to the free versions in the interface they use and the options presented. This is actually one of the advantages of the try before you buy model for tax filing software, where the user can often get used to the software before they have to commit to paying for it. This acts as a kind of hook (who wants to enter all their information in another new tax preparation package once they've made a good start?).

Method of Gathering Basic Tax Payer Information

Questionnaires are often used with tax preparation software to glean basic knowledge about the user of the software. Instead of having to fill out confusing forms and decide which forms you need, a series of questions is often posed which when answered will tell the software what federal tax forms to display for completion in order to file a full tax return.

Federal or State Tax Returns Needed?

When dealing with both federal and state tax returns, only some of the tax packages are sophisticated enough to deal with both. With some software, there is also an additional charge to file a state tax return even after buying the software package.

Lack of Tax Information

When entering your income, deductions and other relevant tax information, some software packages will offer up relevant tax code details that may assist in making decisions on which way to answer a question on a tax form. Other software foregoes this approach and instead keeps things extremely simple by only displaying the information that is needed without any accompanying guidance to go along with it.

For tax filers who have simple tax returns and limited knowledge about the tax code or how to calculate their own tax return, they may be perfectly happy with a basic interface, but for more advanced tax filers, the lack of accompanying tax code information may be seen as a lost opportunity or an inconvenience. It will therefore be beneficial to select the tax software that displays (or not) the tax code information for you.