A short rant about filing taxes online.

[Tidewater]

Honestly, the fact that H&R Block stores and inports all my stuff from last year is a huge reason I use them. ( I know many other online services do too) That alone is enough reason to keep me from trying to use the Federal and Alabama online solutions.

That is a big piece of it. Turbotax recalls my data from last year (where it is applicable) and posts it in the form in the right place.
There is no reason I am aware of that the state of Alabama cannot do the same thing, though.

 

[Bazza]

Turbo Tax had one of the best super bowl ads too!

 

[PaulD]

As an alternative product, I am forced to use the Defense Travel System (DTS) all the time for travel arrangements. Few programs have "federal" and "lowest bidder" written all over it the way DTS does. It is so counterintuitive and non-user friendly. When typing in your departure, if you do not hold down Shift and F6, then you will be routed through Ulan Bator, Mongolia. When I asked, "Why the heck am I flying from Brussels to Berlin and going through Ulan Bator?" All the folks responsible for that monstrosity said, "Everyone knows that if you don't press and hold Shift and F6 when making flying reservations, you will go through Ulan Bator." (Okay, I'm exaggerating, but not much.) DTS is designed by Satan himself (or maybe Vladimir Putin) to drive down morale and productivity of DoD personnel. It takes the gold medal in the crappy software olympics. It is not bad. It is horrible. The people who designed it should be sacked and forever forbidden from employment again
And then I compare it to TurboTax which asks layman's questions and spits out your taxes.

One of the many things I don't miss about working for DoD is the DTS. And from talking to people in my office back then, I was actually pretty good at making it work. So it was clearly time to retire...

 

[CrimsonJazz]

Turbo Tax had one of the best super bowl ads too!

With subpar graphics and no discernible plot, Turbo Tax is, hands down, the worst video game I have ever played.

 

[DzynKingRTR]

With subpar graphics and no discernible plot, Turbo Tax is, hands down, the worst video game I have ever played.

I think I lost the last time I played

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Being a tax pro, with a LLM in Taxation from NYU, I do my own. Tax programs which try to do the thinking just get in the way. However, I had a very inconvenient semi-disaster this weekend. I had finished my Alabama Form 40, using ADOR's software, which does the carrying forward and calculations for you, I decided to print a hard copy, just for security. When I hit "print," an error message came up reading "Oh snap! Something went wrong. Chrome is out of memory." This was my first time ever to use Chrome. I had used Firefox for 8 or 9 years, at least, without this problem. My data was gone beyond recovery, no matter what I tried. After digging around, I found this is a continuing problem with Chrome, which Firefox has anticipated and solved. Hard lesson learned...

 

[Go Bama]

Being a tax pro, with a LLM in Taxation from NYU, I do my own. Tax programs which try to do the thinking just get in the way. However, I had a very inconvenient semi-disaster this weekend. I had finished my Alabama Form 40, using ADOR's software, which does the carrying forward and calculations for you, I decided to print a hard copy, just for security. When I hit "print," an error message came up reading "Oh snap! Something went wrong. Chrome is out of memory." This was my first time ever to use Chrome. I had used Firefox for 8 or 9 years, at least, without this problem. My data was gone beyond recovery, no matter what I tried. After digging around, I found this is a continuing problem with Chrome, which Firefox has anticipated and solved. Hard lesson learned...

I would have pulled my hair out if I had any hair.

That's pretty inexcusable by Chrome. I've switched over to using Firefox almost exclusively just on your recommendation.

 

[TIDE-HSV]

I would have pulled my hair out if I had any hair.

That's pretty inexcusable by Chrome. I've switched over to using Firefox almost exclusively just on your recommendation.

A bonus is that Firefox doesn't harvest your data and sell it...