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H&R Block At Home 2009 Premium Federal + State + eFile
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- H&R Block At Home Premium includes everything you need to easily complete your federal and state taxes, plus five free federal e-files
- Ideal for homeowners, investors, rental property owners, and self-employed Schedule C filers
- Easily import W-2, 1099, and data from last year’s return; quickly import data from TaxCut, TurboTax, Quicken, and Microsoft Money software
- Guidance for reporting investments, dividends, home sales, and retirement income; H&R Block DeductionPro software to maximize tax savings from donations
- Money-saving tools for self-employed Schedule C filers; Advice, tips, and planning tools for the upcoming year
Product DescriptionGuidance for all your personal tax situations. Federal forms and State forms. Step-by-step interviews guide you through a customized experience relevant to your tax situation. Everything you need to prepare your federal and state taxes in one complete program. Amazon. com Product DescriptionH&R Block At Home Premium includes everything you need to easily complete your federal and state taxes, plus five free federal e-files. Everything you need to easi. . . More >>
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March 12, 2010 -
Business & Home Office -
5 comments
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Del.ico.us
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I have used taxcut for some years now and like it a lot – but note to Mac users – while a Mac version is available, this is NOT it, nor can I find it on Amazon. If there is any way to change to the Mac version, please let me know! In the meantime I will use VMWare to run it (sigh).
Rating: 4 / 5
I used the old version of this software (H&R Block Tax Cut) for about eight years now, and this year’s version was probably the easiest one to use. If you have all your W2s, home mortgage information, bank interest information, and other records ready to go it’ll probably take you less than an hour to get your taxes done. They also offer a lot of information regarding changes to tax laws as well as comparisons to other people’s returns who made about the same amount of money as you. They actually try to teach you something about adjustments and tax rules, but you can skip it if you don’t really care about those things and just want to get your taxes done. The software is very good at asking you questions to make sure you claim all your deductions which means a bigger refund.
I read other people’s complaints that the software is too hard to download and install. I had no problem with it. I think it really depends on your ability and confidence in installing software. Yes, the key code to get your five free federal e-files is found somewhere in your Amazon order history – is it really that hard to find??
Check H&R Block’s website to see which version you need. The more expensive ones do have benefits to them, like the ability to make one call to one of their accounts/ tax professionals for free. Check the site and buy the one that’s best for you.
Rating: 4 / 5
I was OK with this program and the reviews up until I needed to import data from my financial institutions. There is no capability to do this from such major institutions as Fidelity Investments or Chase Bank and countless others. That’s a huge disadvantage for anyone who has a decent number of stock, mutual fund or other taxable financial transactions over the course of a year. TurboTax is a much better software package if that is what you need.
Rating: 2 / 5
Having been a loyal(?) TurboTax user since 1997 I found the blogs full of disdain about TurboTax 2009 (State returns limited to one, shammy marketing tactics, up-selling tactics, price, moved R&D to Bangalore, India, shabby support, etc), so I decided to try H&R Block At Home Premium(formerly TaxCut).
I ordered the download version on Amazon and had no problem with the download or install on my Windows XP machine.
(I did follow the advice from one reviewer to download the Amazon game loader first and download a free game to make sure it works. . . . no problems and great advice. . . Thanks!)
I have now completed 3 Federal and State returns using H&R Block At Home (2 very simple children’s returns and my more complex self employed with depreciable assets and somewhat complex investments). I have found this program as easy to use as (if not easier than) TurboTax, and it does not have the annoying up-sell marketing stuff that comes in TurboTax. I was able to import previous year tax files from TurboTax with no problem and it appears that everything carried over properly. My only complaint is the very limited financial institution downloads ( I doubt that I am the only customer using Chase Bank, TD Ameritrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, American Funds;)
I have already completed one Fed e-file and got an e-mail reply within 12 hours that the IRS accepted the return.
Just remember where to find your Key Code as you will need it when using the 5 included free Fed e-files. State e-files are available for an additional fee.
Overall, I highly recommend H&R Block At Home. I would give it 5 stars if they improve the financial institution download support.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is the buggiest software I have seen in a long time. No regard for flexibility and convenience at all. . .
It starts with the installer. First you need to download Amazon Installer, just to be able to download the tax software. The download auto-extracts to C:Program Files. . . (and my OS happens to be on D: drive!). Then you are prompted to save installation package in some other place. Only then can you install the tax software while the tax filing key remains somewhere in the online Amazon account. . . way too complicated!
The program is being silently blocked by every firewall imaginable and even by Avast antivirus. Even with all antiviruses and firewalls disabled, it sometimes won’t connect to internet or print to PDF and need to be killed, and then start working again with no system settings changed. Just seeing that HTTP request failed takes 5 long minutes of pointless progress bar animation.
I have used previous generations of TaxCut and was quite satisfied. But the 2009 version is a poor poor software engineering job!
Rating: 1 / 5