TurboTax

The Free Version of TurboTax includes Helpful Features

Price: Free, including federal e-file
Adding a state tax return costs $25.95, including state e-file
Out the door pricing for 1 federal, 1 state, and e-file: $25.95

Intuit bundles Q&As from their Live Community message board into context-sensitive questions appearing along the right-hand side of the screen. At various points, TurboTax will ask if you want the program to "Guide Me" to select the right answer for a tax question, for example in helping to decide if someone is your dependent or in figuring out the right filing status to use.

The free edition of TurboTax has a Federal Review and error-checking utility. These features helps to identify data entry errors and other items that may need to be double-checked for filing your return.

TurboTax also provides an easy-to-use W-4 calculator to help you accurately adjusting your paycheck withholding for 2009.

TurboTax prompts you to save your data by creating a username and password. If you are trying out the program (like I was), I choose not to set up a username just yet. Other programs will prompt you occaisionally to register. When TurboTax prompts you to register, you can indicate you don't want to be reminded to save your data. For me this little tweak in the user experience helped me stay focused on drafting out a tax return.

Some Tax Forms are Not Included in the Free Version

The free edition of TurboTax does not provide access to the following common tax forms and schedules: Schedules C (for self-employment), Schedule D (for capital gains), Schedule E (for rental property and income reported via Schedules K-1), and Schedule F (for farm income). By contrast, the free standard edition of TaxACT provides access to all these schedules.

Preparing a Simple Return in TurboTax can be Relatively Quick

I prepared a fairly straightforward tax return with one W-2, one dependent, an IRA deduction, and the recovery rebate in 35 minutes. Using TurboTax took me slightly longer than using TaxCut or TaxACT, but I also went through several of the Guide Me interviews (which were not provided in the other two software programs). So even though TurboTax took me longer to finish my return, I feel the tax preparation process was more thorough.

Browser Compatibility

TurboTax Free Edition is available only as a Web-based software application. The TurboTax web site is compatible with the following Web browsers: Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 2+, AOL 9+, Netscape 9+, Flock 2+, Safari 3+. The site also requires that Adobe Flash Player 9+ and Acrobat Reader be installed.