TaxACT Reviewer's Comments

Tax preparers, relax, TaxACT 2007 Ultimate Online can ease all of your filing anxieties. This bundle, offered by 2nd Story Software, includes two products, TaxACT Online Deluxe and TaxACT Online State at an extremely reasonable price, and can transfer 1040 data into the state forms and import 2006 information if you used TaxACT 2006. This bundle is a great product that can cover most individual or small business tax needs. With its improved interface and outstanding help system, TaxACT 2007 Ultimate Online surpasses H&R Block’s TaxCut for this year, earning our “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award.”

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Intuitive Navigation:  

The navigation is intuitive and easy to use. Through TaxACT you can quickly jump to different areas of your return or to specific forms, topics or tax help.

Novice-Friendly:  

This is where TaxAct really shines, because not only is their interview process simple and straight-forward, but the help and explanations are with you on every screen.  Along with the Form Instructions button, which displays W-2 form help if you’re filling out your W-2, 1099 help if you’re filling out your 1099, and so on.  It knows where you are and what you need.  To top it off, J.K. Lasser's Expert Tax Help & Tips is also on every screen, ready with its veritable encyclopedia of tax information, and tax planning strategies.

TaxACT 2007 Ultimate Online has done away with manual form entry, offering a streamlined interview process that’s so simple to follow, you’ll almost forget that this is a tax-related service.  The state program is even easier to use than the federal, all the federal information is automatically transferred, then simply answer a few state-specific questions, run the alert checker and you are done.

Ease of Sign-up:  

Creating your TaxACT account is a cinch:  Create your user name, choose your password, pick a secret question and answer combination, and give them your email address and you’re done!  There’s even a password strength meter, so you can create the strongest password possible for improved security.

Feature Set:  

This service supports federal and 43 state electronic filings. Federal and State preparation and E-filing is a mere $16.95, and you can print and mail as many as you want.Investors can import capital gains transactions from GainsKeeper© and it has a handy "Life Events" feature. This feature can determine the future tax impact of life events such as marriage, adding children to your family, income adjustments, divorce, and more.  The Bundle service includes most of the commonly used IRS tax forms and they guarantee their calculations. If fact, they will pay your penalties and interest if the software makes a calculation error.The state filing is available for every income-taxing state, and can be filed electronically in 43 states. It can be printed through Adobe Acrobat Reader and they offer part-year and non-resident forms for 32 states. Once your federal 1040 is completed, the state return only takes a matter of minutes to complete.

Help/Documentation/Search:  

As mentioned previously, the help system is more than adequate, and includes all the necessary form instructions and explanations, J.K. Lasser Expert Tax Help & Tips, as well as tech support through telephone, mail, and email. They also include a useful FAQ section, and their search function has been beefed up from previous versions, giving accurate results on the most commonly-searched terms.

Summary:  

TaxACT 2007 Ultimate Online  is an exceptional tax service deal at $16.95 for Federal and State returns, and E-filing.  Add to that the investment advice and awesome help system, TaxACT is definitely worth a second look.  TaxACT 2007 Ultimate is also available in a software download version for $19.95, and the same version comes on a CD for an additional $5.95. The software includes federal and state filing and all of the convenient features of the online version. The advantage of the software version is you can use the same program each year as long as you update the software. The disadvantages are you have to install the software on your computer, update it yearly and it costs $5 more than the online version plus shipping fees.