Last year the folks at Intuit (makers of Turbo Tax) removed support for schedules C and D from the on line and download versions of the Deluxe version of the program.
This year they removed it from the CD box (which I’m calling “desktop” to differentiate it from the mobile version) as well.
Schedule D is for Capital Gains. It’s been a part of the Deluxe package for many years but has now been moved into the Premium package for about $20 more ($54.99 vs. $34.99 on their site). It’s not been a big thing for me in the past as I might sell a stock only once in a while, but their moving it from one package to another kinda ticked me off. Apparently I’m not alone as a quick search found this Forbes article.
Schedule C requires you to get the Home and Business version for yet another $20 price jump.
There are many articles about it out there (do a search for “turbotax 2014 angry customer” to see some). It’s taking a hit in Amazon’s reviews and even their stock price has dropped since the first of the year. (Recovered some as of today but still not back where it was.) Like me, a lot of people seem to feel that this was just a way to weasel in a price increase.
TurboTax says that if you know what you’re doing you can still get to the forms for Schedules C, D, E and F using the “forms” instead of “interview” option. But you won’t be able to file them electronically.
Crud. I’ve used them for 10 years. I don’t even have to file a Schedule D this year, but this kind of move makes me want to jump ship. H&R Block is cheaper and supposedly just as good (and imports TurboTax files) and TaxAct is cheaper still.
Not up to a full pitting, but I will go so far as to say “A pox upon thee, Intuit.” It will be interesting to see if people accept this or start jumping ship en masse. I’m sure they think they will do ok as they’re the market leader, but it seems as if they’re shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Or is that supposed to be “prverbially shooting themselves in the foot?”
Huh. I actually wound up buying the Premium version this year, because it looked like they might not have the Schedule D in the Deluxe version - in prior years it was included in Deluxe but I thought it might have better support.
I guess I just assumed it would be like previous years, but we’ve got a slightly more complex tax situation for 2014.
They’ve also quit allowing imports from older versions of Quicken, the bastards. I’ve got the 2012 version, will have to upgrade to the 2015 version by this spring or lose my download capability - but I’m reasonably sure the database structure hasn’t changed enough that they couldn’t import. Just another stick to force users to downgrade to the newer versions.
“Downgrade” != typo - every new version (and I wait the maximum 3 years before upgrading) changes things for no apparent reason, adds no useful new features, is slower to run, and is buggy as hell.
I sure wish someone would come up with a good competitor to Quicken. H&R Block is a good competitor to TurboTax but the front end, where you do stuff on a daily basis, has no competition. Much as I loathe Microsoft-anything, at least MS Money kept Intuit on their feet for a bit.
If this is true they’ve lost me as a customer forever.
Doubly so since I have been on subscription for the Deluxe flavor for years and have already paid for 2014. If in fact it doesn’t contain C & D there better be a full refund coming. Otherwise it’s pure bait & switch: promise one capability and deliver something less.
If you read the box closely it doesn’t offer you D in Deluxe. It does this by listing “investments” in the next price tier. That makes it your fault for getting used to the way it used to be.
In their favor: I’m a subscriber to TurboTax and need Schedule C each year. When I got to that point in Deluxe this year, it offered me a free upgrade to Home and Business. A couple of clicks and I was back in business (pun intended).
I’m assuming, though, that next year I’ll have to buy Home and Business at whatever the going rate is then.
The press release I read said that you’ll be able to activate the needed features through a $30 or $40 upgrade. So it’s not that you can’t file those returns, it’s just that some people will pay more this year for the same capabilities they had last year.
Anyone who’s surprised by this doesn’t know Intuit very well. They’ve been offering bug fixes in QuickBooks as “upgrades” for a decade now (if not longer).
For me, it’s a win-win. On the one hand, I own Intuit stock, and on the other, my business specializes in preparing the more complicated returns.
I’m being charged $20 More for my Capital Gains!? Thats it… Government is Just Too Big!
I spend Thousands and Thousands of dollars every year on re-election campaigns, and I have to deal with This!?
I like the convenience/durability of the TurboTax online solution, but last year after finishing my taxes I wrote myself a simple little .txt file and put it in my 2014 tax subdirectory: “do not use TurboTax”
I had subscribed to what seemed to be the correct version, but like others I was forced to edition-upgrade to get something rather simple like a Schedule D. To me, things like Schedules C and D are basic and should be part of any basic package.
TaxCut will have me this year, and they’ve been advertising heavily (“come back! We’ll give you 50% off!”), and have a chart of included features/forms that highlights their all-in-one approach vs. Intuit’s multiple-product technique.
We just bought H&R Block for this very reason. My wife uses Schedule C - nothing all that complicated, but I’m sure as hell not going to support a company that yanks it and also D. We’ve been using TurboTax forever, so we’ll see.
I think you should be able to submit electronically even if you do the forms directly. In some years past when they didn’t support SEP we had to fiddle with the forms, and never had a problem.
Aren’t mutual fund distributions still reported on Schedule D? If so, then this is going to hurt a lot of people who invest in them (and reinvest the distributions automatically) as part of their retirement savings.
I’m pretty sure distributions within an IRA or similar plan don’t have to be reported. But anything sold within a regular plan, even if reinvested, shows up on the forms you get from your financial services company and does get reported. I sold options last year so I really have some work to do.
I can’t believe a tax package calling itself “deluxe” does not support schedules C, D, E, and F. I use Turbotax every year. Why give me and plenty of other customers a solid reason to try a competitor’s product?
Between this and their “you have to upgrade Quicken every three years if you want to do anything online” policy (because accounting technology advances just so fast) I am fed up with Intuit.
They pulled a similar stunt last year or two years ago, and had a big backlash. Is this their way of driving product awareness?
I don’t even need these, but when I went to download TurboTax 2014 today from Amazon, I saw all the complaints and the low reviews and so I went and bought H&R Block instead for the first time. Raising the price and removing features? I won’t support that.
That’s what I meant - when you put money into mutual funds directly (e.g. through Charles Schwab) with instructions to reinvest distributions, you still have to note all distributions on Schedule D Line 13 (and then you have to remember how much was put back into each mutual fund and when, so that when you finally sell the funds, you have a cost which is subtracted from the sale amount - otherwise you end up paying tax on the distribution twice; once when it takes place, and again when you sell).
I have 30 years’ worth of tax returns in a box pretty much just for this purpose.
If the only capital gains you have to report are from mutual fund distributions, then they can go directly on the 1040 without needing to complete Sch D.
If you’re already doing D for other reasons (like stock sales) then there is a line for the mutual fund distributions to be added to your other capital gains.
Furthermore, the activity in an IRA or 401k account would never be reported on D (or anywhere else on the return). Qualified retirement accounts only generate reportable transactions when you take money out of them. So the only people using D to report these distributions are those who have the mutual funds in a brokerage account, outside of a qualified retirement account.
Intuit are a bunch of sneaky, cheap bastards. Their business model is to buy up competitors and make their software shitty although they aren’t yet the only game in town. It is reasonable to assume that the basic version does not include Schedule C. But missing D (or B) is not as apparent, and at it’s most basic form D (without 8949 or others), it is simple as hell.
I use either H&R Block online or TaxAct. No state tax so I don’t pay. I think I prefer the former as TaxAct had some user friendliness issues but it’s not terrible.