turbo tax 2009 on sale

Product Description

Find and maximize your deductions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98 in Software
• Brand: Intuit
• Model: 408077
• Released on: 2008-11-21
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .70" h x 5.40" w x 7.60" l, .15 pounds

Features

• Prepare and print unlimited federal and state returns; e-file up to five federal returns (per IRS guidelines) at no additional charge
• Includes free federal efile -- receive IRS confirmation and get your refund in as few as 8 days
• Everything you need to easily do your tax return--asks easy questions customized to your situation, puts your answers on the correct IRS forms, checks for errors
• Searches for more than 350 deductions, including mortgage interest, education, and medical expenses, to get you the biggest refund--guaranteed
• TurboTax is the only tax software to include both e-filing and audit support with every federal return

Amazon.com
TurboTax Deluxe helps find and maximize deductions. The software includes all the features in TurboTax Basic and guides customers step-by-step through mortgage interest, charitable contributions, education expenses, medical expenses and more. Not only does TurboTax Deluxe show taxpayers how to qualify for deductions, it also tracks how much they have saved. The software also includes ItsDeductible--the "bluebook" for donated items that helps accurately value your donations in compliance with IRS guidelines.

Asks easy questions We customize questions to your unique tax situation and put your answers on the right tax forms for you. Click to enlarge.

Maximizes deductions We search for more than 350 deductions to get you the biggest refund possible--guaranteed. Click to enlarge.

Efile for a fast refund Efile with direct deposit to get your refund in as few as 8 days. Federal efile included.

Everything you need to do your taxes with ease.

Finds All the Deductions You Deserve

Maximizes Your Tax Deductions
Asks simple questions about your income, family situation and changes in your tax situation. Then, based on your answers, searches for more than 350 deductions to get you the biggest tax refund--guaranteed.

Looks for Deduction Opportunities as You Go
Shows you which deductions you've taken. Which deductions you haven't. And tells you how to qualify for just about any deduction, so you don't miss any opportunities to save.

Gets You the Maximum Deduction for Donations
ItsDeductible (included) helps you accurately value items you donate to charity--no more guessing. Plus, it tracks other donations such as cash, mileage and stocks, to help you get every charitable deduction you're entitled to.

Improved Handles Your Life Changes
Changed jobs? Got married? Bought a home? Had a baby? TurboTax guides you through common life changes, explains how the changes will impact your taxes, and tells you what you can deduct.

Helps with Medical Expenses
Does all the math and tells you if you qualify to deduct your medical expenses for maximum tax savings.

Filing Multiple Returns? It’s Easy with TurboTax

You can prepare and print unlimited federal returns and e-file up to five federal returns (per IRS guidelines) with TurboTax at no additional charge. You get all the features and benefits of TurboTax, like year-over-year transfer and audit support tools.

Federal e-filing is easy, fast and more accurate than paper filing and eliminates paperwork hassles. You'll receive IRS confirmation your return has been received and best of all, you'll get a faster refund—in as little as 8 days.* And you can start and work on as many returns as you like and still use all the tax planning features (scenario and alternative planning) you've come to value without having to pay extra.

*IRS typically estimates 8-15 days for efile with direct deposit.

Helps You Reduce Audit Risk

New Tracks Your Audit Risk
Audit Risk Meter checks your tax return for common audit triggers. Shows whether your risk is high or low. And provides tips to help you reduce your chance of an audit.

Includes Downloadable Audit Support Center
Gives you step-by-step guidance on everything you need to know and do if the IRS contacts you.

Alerts You to Audit Red Flags
Compares your deductions to national averages for your income bracket so you can quickly see if your deductions fall outside the norm and could possibly trigger an audit.

Does the Hard Work for You

Asks Easy Questions, Tailored to You
Guides you step by step through your tax return and puts your answers on the right tax forms for you. Skips interview questions that don't apply to you, so you can finish your return faster.

Improved Automatically Fills in W-2 and 1099 Info
Gets your W-2 and 1099 data directly from over 100,000 participating employers and financial institutions and automatically puts it in the right tax forms. A brief summary lets you review and edit downloaded information if necessary.

Transfers Last Year's Tax Info
No retyping necessary. Fills in information from your previous year's return to save time and increase accuracy. Shows you what you're importing and where it goes in your return. You can also import from other tax software including TaxACT and H&R Block's TaxCut.

Imports Your Financial Data
Imports information from your financial software (including Quicken, QuickBooks 2007 and higher, and Microsoft Money) so you can skip the cut and paste this year.

Provides Help and Advice When You Need It

Live Tax Answers
Get live answers online from TurboTax experts and other TurboTax users in our Live Community. Plus you'll have instant access to answers to commonly asked tax questions on every screen.

Straightforward Guidance & Advice
Find help on any tax topic from anywhere within TurboTax. Get plain-English explanations of specific tax areas and helpful examples when you need them.

New Guide Me
Not sure how to answer a tax question? We'll guide you to the right answer, making your taxes even easier.

New Explains Your Return
Shows you a summary of your return, including income, tax, credits and payments so you know your taxes are accurate. Provides recommendations to help you get an even bigger refund next year.

FREE Technical Support
Got a software question? No problem! Get answers from a TurboTax expert via e-mail, phone, or live chat.

Spots Errors and Shows How to Fix Them

Checks for Mistakes
Double-checks your return for errors, so you can be confident your taxes are done right.

Guaranteed Accurate Calculations
If you should get hit with an IRS or state penalty or interest due to a TurboTax calculation error, we'll pay you the penalty and interest.

Keeps You Up-to-Date with the Latest Tax Laws
With a single click you can check for updates each time you start to ensure your return includes the latest IRS and state tax forms. No more disruptions while you work on your return.

Get Your Refund Faster with Included Federal Efile

Improved Shows Your Tax Refund in Real Time
Watch your refund add up as you complete your return. Our improved Dual Refund Monitor constantly displays and updates both your federal and state refunds (or taxes due) as you complete your federal return.

New Federal Efile Included
Get your refund in as few as 8 days with efile and direct deposit. Five federal efiles are now included with TurboTax at no extra charge. If you're a returning user, we'll automatically transfer your efile information from your previous year's return to save you even more time.

Customer Reviews

TurboTax better than TaxCut
This is an edited review with the new information immediately below. The old portions of the review can be found further down below the dashes. There you can find out how Intuit managed to eliminate their negative reviews on Amazon, or how they almost lost a bunch of customers. Now for the review ...

As promised, this is my TurboTax Deluxe vs. TaxCut Premium review. I used both programs in parallel on my Mac to do two tax returns, one with rental properties, a side business, and investments. I won't keep you in suspense: TurboTax is better. Given the recent Intuit shenanigans with TurboTax limitations and pricing, I really wanted to discover that TaxCut was better. Alas, that was not to be.

So what's better about TurboTax? The most significant for me is TurboTax's display of last-year and this-year amount columns in the wages and income summary (you get there with "select specific topics" and after you visit each topic), the deductions and credits summary, and in the rental common expenses interviews. They are the best way to see what I need to do, and what I might have forgotten. Like those home owner's association dues on one of my properties that I almost forgot. TaxCut does provide a two-year summary, as does TurboTax. However I don't find that very useful in either program since it's at a high level. Also TaxCut shows it as a form, which is an inconvenient way to look at it.

TaxCut also manages to be annoying in how it displays last year's imported data. There is a single column with blue numbers for last year. You might think that they would change color or something when you enter this year's data, but no. TaxCut doesn't even keep track of what I've entered, since it asks me if I replaced the old information, when that's what I just did. The display and questions are confusing and less than helpful.

The two columns in TurboTax, with "not visited" in the this-year column until I do something with it, as well as buttons that say Revisit if I've been there or Start if I haven't, is the right way to do it. (Though I wish TurboTax would display this year in black and last year in gray, instead of the other way around.)

Another nice thing in TurboTax is that I can have two returns open at the same time and work on them both. Not so with TaxCut. TurboTax enables much easier what-ifs between two returns, like who gets which dependents.

Again, TaxCut manages to be annoying even in opening the one return, since it doesn't remember was I was doing. TaxCut always comes up with the same window, making me pick work on an old return and click on it. The first time I came back, TaxCut didn't even know what directory I had saved the return in.

TurboTax comes up with the last return I was working on already open, with a button to continue where I left off. One flaw in TurboTax is that it doesn't remember that I had two returns open -- it only opens that last one I was messing with.

TurboTax always checks for updates when you launch it. TaxCut requires that you do that manually. TaxCut might let you know on an interview page if it happens to know that an update is forthcoming.

There were many times that TaxCut had a very short, arbitrary limit on the number of characters in a field, which prevented me from entering what I needed to identify what it was both for the IRS, and for myself next year. There may be field limits in TurboTax as well, but I never ran into them.

TaxCut also made it very difficult to look at the form relevant to what I am currently working on. In TurboTax I just hit the forms button in the upper right (and the little feetsies to get back), and I'm there. In TaxCut, I had to go find the form, if I even knew which form it was, and once there the display was cumbersome.

TurboTax also makes it easy to move between forms and worksheets by double-clicking on numbers that come from another form or worksheet. You end up at the source for that number. TaxCut instead asks you if you want to override the number from the unspecified different form.

I won't go into the myriad of little things, like TurboTax accepts 08 for 2008, where TaxCut requires you type 2008, or that TaxCut doesn't use the little red button in the corner and doesn't keep track of whether you've made any changes and need to save, but suffice it to say that in many ways TurboTax was much more pleasant to use.

Some things that are better in TaxCut: the Child EIC and tax credit rules are more clear in the interview process; the Next button mostly stayed in the same place making it easy to review, where in TurboTax the Continue button keeps moving around; TaxCut separates the deductions from the credits, which I like better than TurboTax which munges them together in one page; and of course the biggie, which is that TaxCut never bugs me about upgrading to the next version and sending them another $30 or $40 like TurboTax does *incessantly*.

But the few good things come nowhere near balancing the bad things about TaxCut. Unfortunately, I have to recommend TurboTax Deluxe over TaxCut Premium.

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Cute trick! You can get rid of all the negative reviews of your product by "updating" the product! The previous Amazon page for this same product had 290 customer reviews (as compared to the 97 reviews on this page today), and out of those 290 reviews, 269 were one star! (You can find a link to the previous page just above the customer reviews here in a box titled "Looking for Customer Reviews for a previous version?".)

To be fair, the negative reviews were largely due to Turbo Tax having a charge for printing returns after the first, and Intuit changed that policy to unlimited printed returns, including my one-star review. But still, allowing a vendor to erase their reviews when they don't like them does not seem like a good precedent for Amazon. Though in this case it didn't completely work out for the vendor, since they continued to accumulate a large percentage of one star reviews (currently 64 out of 97). They did go from an average of one star to an average of two stars.

Getting back to the product, I have copied my review from the previous page here for reference (see below the ----). But first some comments about another prominent review here.

The review that is listed today as the most helpful review actually isn't very helpful, so don't take it too seriously. TurboTax Deluxe most certainly does include Schedule D, Schedule C, and Schedule SE, as well as Schedule E. This has not changed from previous years, so S. Gerber's complaint about an implicit price increase from previous years is simply not correct.

What is true is that TurboTax offers more "help" with those schedules in the more expensive Premier and Home & Business versions. Again, that has been the case in the past as well. However I have rental properties, stock investments, and a side self-employment business and have been using the Deluxe version for years to do my taxes with no problems. In general I find the TurboTax "help" to be less than helpful. All I need is for the software to provide the forms, let me fill them out, do the calculations for me, correctly, and print the forms. I have no need for the "help" in the more expensive versions.

What TurboTax does that really is helpful, at all price levels, is that it allows me to compare my previous year forms and this year's forms at a detailed level. That helps me catch things that I might have forgotten, and to spot unusual deltas that I should look into. [Added note: another review here said that this year's version has eliminated the side-by-side review that was there in previous years! If true, that may be a deal breaker for me.]

Now for my review from the old page (with a few minor changes) ...

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This review previously noted the fine print for Turbo Tax, not present on the Amazon page, that said: returns after the first, even if printed, would incur a $10 charge. After a great deal of negative customer reaction, including many bad customer reviews here, a CNET article on these reviews, and their competitor changing their product to offer five free e-files, Intuit has decided to mend their ways.

Now Turbo Tax 2008 will work as before, allowing printing additional returns for no charge, and they have matched their competition in providing five free e-filed federal returns with the product. They even got Amazon to alert consumers at the top of the product page: "FREE: 5 federal e-files and unlimited printed returns included with every TurboTax 2008 product." (Funny though that they didn't have a similar alert before at the top of the page about charging $10 for each printed return, but I digress.)

My review previously ended with: "I have been using Turbo Tax for the past eight years. But not this year."

Now I plan to use Turbo Tax for the ninth year. Though I am also giving TaxCut a try in parallel and see how that goes. Based on that experience, I will decide on one or the other for next year. I will update this review once I have done that comparison.

TurboTax Basic
I don't know what all the hoopla about whether or not TT Deluxe includes schedules C, D, and E is! TT BASIC includes these forms for crying out loud! Granted, their web site leads one to Premier if stocks have been sold, which is TOTALY misleading. If one digs deep enough to find out which forms are included and supported in BASIC, one will find: "Schedule D/D-1Capital Gains and Losses/Additional Capital Gains and Losses," "Schedule C/EZProfit (or Loss) from Business/Net Profit from Business," " Schedule ESupplemental Income and Loss." I have used BASIC for years and filled out schedule "A" with all my deductions including mortgage interest and medical deductions, "D" for all my stock sale gains and losses, and "E" for rental income.
Click on: http://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/basic.jsp, and then click on "Included Forms" in small blue print in the center of that page.
I live in Florida, so a state return is not needed. If you live in a state where a return is needed, then perhaps the Deluxe + State bundle may be cheaper than buying Basic + a State separately.
I think Intuit's leading customers to more expensive programs that are NOT needed in UNCONSCIONABLE!

No print charge but not as good as last years version
Initial reactions:

The good - we won the battle on print charges. The basic interface for selecting Income & Deduction categories remains unchanged from last year.

The bad - Nagging registration screen under the guise of Taxpayer Update Info. Why do I have to refuse this screen each & every time I start the program? Give me the 'stop nagging' option.

Tax reviews are in a clumsier format than last years version. They eliminated the useful side-by-side comparison of current year to prior year numbers. Instead they used that prior year space to show you what you entered into the program & what they are accepting for your return, the difference & a click through to what the reason may be. Also useful but now if you want to see how your taxes compare to last year you will need to launch last years program/return to do so.

It's Deductible - a great way to handle your non-cash deductions - must now be done on-line, using IE, and then imported into TT. Awkward - should be embedded in the TT program.