Time flies in the blink of an eye, and I always like to get a running start on things like taxes well before hand.

I’ve always used TurboTax, and have been buying their software for the last several years.  However, Intuit made some very questionable changes this year, on their TurboTax feature set that ruffled alot of feathers – eliminating suport for Schedule C and Schedule E on their “Deluxe” software ($55 MSRP), forcing buyers to get Premium ($80 MSRP), for these features.

For those unfamiliar with tax filings, Schedules C and E handle stocks/investments & real estate rentals, respectively.  These are (2) biggies / requirements for me, which I can’t live without.

With some advice from Amazon reviews and Slickdeals, I looked into getting H&R Block’s TaxCut software instead – at $45 & $65 MSRP for their Deluxe & Premium software, respectively.  Supposedly, for both levels, TaxCut provides pretty much the same feature set.  Alot of the reviews also claimed that the transition from TurboTax to TaxCut is seamless, so it seemed that it’s worth trying.  I pulled the trigger a couple of days after the New Year, and my software was on its way!

I got the software a couple of days back, and unfortunately, it’s a no go in my case.

As some of you know, I help a handful of close friends and family members with filing their tax returns every year, providing a turnkey service for free.  Thus, this requires that I file multiple returns.

Unfortunately, with TaxCut, the software ships with a sheet / coupon code that’s allows up to a maximum of 5 federal tax E-Files… Of course, there was no mention of this anywhere in the product descriptions (at least that I saw).  I had to box it up and return, as I didn’t see a point in installing / using TaxCut with the 5 Federal return limitation.

So, if I were to continue helping my F&F… I’d need to get at 2 copies, negating the cost savings.  I ended up still getting a copy of TurboTax Premium.  Not a big deal – I think it’s still a good value for the amount of time saved!

But – based on the tons of reviews posted, it looks like TaxCut is a good enough alternative to TurboTax.  If the (5) federal filing limit is removed in the future, I’ll be tempted to try it out!