It’s that time of year again; Time to do your taxes. If you do a quick search for tax software, you’ll find a vast amount of choices, depending on what you need and what you’re willing to pay.
Small Businesses Don’t Have the option to do their taxes, FREE ONLINE.
Most tax software companies offer an online free service where you can create an account and do your taxes online. Some of them limit your income or even how complex your taxes are. As an individual you should be able to find a free or extremely cheap way to get your taxes done. The IRS offers information on various websites: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File%3A-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-Free.
Also, if you’re in the military, you can either do your taxes for free or get a discount depending on your rank. However, small business owners aren’t generally included in any of these options. Even if there was a choice available for small business owners, you should question the idea of putting your sensitive tax information online, no matter how much they guarantee this information is safe.
Only a couple of tax software companies actually offer downloadable software.
Three companies actually have tax software that you use on your computer for small business: TaxAct, H&R; Block and Turbotax. So your choices are limited if you don’t want to get someone else to do it or do it the old-fashioned way with a pencil and paper.
TaxAct
TAxAct is the only software that is Free. You can download the software at the TaxAct website where you’ll also have to register: https://www.taxact.com/s_taxact/nc_register.asp
According to the write-up about this software it has “over 120 forms, schedules and worksheets, plus the interview steps you through completing your return, or you can enter directly onto the tax forms. TaxACT calculates your return for you, then reviews your return and alerts you of possible errors. Prepare, print, and e-file your return for free.”
I downloaded the TaxAct software and actually worked my way through it, plugging in the relevant information. Although it says that it’s a 1040 version, it does address small business questions pertaining to having a home business: home office expenses including home repair and car expenses. At the end of the process, the software reported that I had $3971 coming back to me.
For the past 6 or so years, I’ve used H&R; Block and have been a real fan of the software. It’s always been accurate and easy to use. This year, though, a lot of users are complaining about the errors in the software and some of those same people have had installation problems. The number of years that this has been happening has been several. There are complaints that I’ve found as far back as 2009. Yet, I haven’t had any problems installing or using this software and have felt that it has been accurate. H&R; Block is a whole lot cheaper than Turbotax and that in itself has its benefits.
Turbotax has been around longer than H&R; Block, which was formerly TaxCut. It’s been a longtime since I used the software and this time I used the Home and Business version of Turbotax. The download was quick. The installation was easy. The software is as big as I remember it being and feels like it has more relevant questions and answers in the forms than H&R; Block. It easily imported last year’s taxes from H&R; Block. After finishing the process, I had a refund of $4,179, which is about $200 more than TaxAct had said.
I opened last year’s taxes done in H&R; block in Turbotax. Last year, using H&R; Block, I got a return of $3,309. The same return from Turbotax was $4,149. I’m going to look into this more to see if the problem is valid and if my previous year’s taxes done in H&R; Block could result in a higher tax return if done in Turbotax.
After doing this comparison, I’m going to use Turbotax. It gave me a higher return than the other two tax softwares. The software made me confident that my taxes were done right and at this point, I understand the higher price tag.
If you want to purchase Turbotax, Amazon has the best deal.
Click Here to Go Directly to the Turbotax Home & Business 2012 Software.
