Do any fellow dopers have a recommendation for income tax preparation programs? I have been using TurboTax for several years but I often feel that it would be faster and to just do my taxes by hand. I particullary dislike their interview process. I would much prefer a program that let you enter data directly into the IRS forms but would perform the required calculations and transfer results from one form to another as required.
This post was prompted by my recent filing of an amended return. In double-checking the numbers I found that there seemed to be no relation to the data on their “taxes paid” worksheet and entries made in the 1040 schedule A. After more than an hour of performing reverse calculations to come up with a scenario of how these numbers were arrived at I found that TurboTax had (correctly) taken SDI numbers from the W-2 forms and (correctly) not included estimated state taxes paid in 2002 (to be used as deductions against fed tax). But TurboTax gave no hint that it was doing so! :mad: