It is that time of the year for folks working and earning in USA. I am not a constitutional expert; but this much I understand. Come Apr 15th (or around there) we have to complete filing the tax returns to ensure that what may be due as per reams of legislation makes it to the Internal Revenue Service. And dutifully millions of folks do this every year, including yours truly.
For several years, I had been using Turbo Tax software for filing tax returns. Gone are the days of the paper based filing, paper collection, paper submission, etc. I found that the entire collection of information and filing can be done using online services that are connected seamlessly with Turbo Tax. Intuit, the creator of Turbo Tax, has diligently paid attention to details and provides a wonderful experience.
The user experience was even more smooth this year. This year I installed Turbo Tax on my Mac Book Pro (15″) and filed it from there. Bigger screen compared to the 13.1″ windows laptop screen from years past was challenging because for whatever reason, Turbo tax required horizontal and vertical scrolls. Availability of virtual desktop on the Mac OS X was convenient since it allowed me to visit related sites to check on things in another desktop.
The service experience, wherein Turbo Tax connects with a variety of providers for W2, 1099s, 1098s, etc., has continued to improve very well. I like that Turbo Tax presents stock purchase and sale information succinctly. There is further room for improvement here, especially for users like me who have more than 10 stock transactions in a given year (okay, several were losses and there were some gains too).
Easy Steps interview experience from Turbo tax completely hides the details of forms. I found that my tax return required 100s of screens of data to be provided or verified and ran into 10s of form pages. I would prefer this Easy Steps interview experience to use consistent location for Back and Continue buttons, instead of dancing around from page to page.
The final e-filing experience was always good. This year, I had to do three attempts to get the filing submitted to Intuit’s data centers. Perhaps I was doing this on almost the last day and the servers were likely overloaded. I was almost about to give up and start worrying about the long lines at the post office to post the returns. And then the final try came through. Hopefully from Intuit, the return arrives at IRS smoothly and on time.
Overall I rate the Turbo Tax experience 90%. Thanks Inuit and Turbo Tax creators. There is definitely improvement that can be done to shorten the time required and improve the consistency. For the tax efficacy, it is a tough subject. As would others, I also would like to save some tax money. And am still looking for Economic Tax experience. There is (still) opportunity to find ways to help one to improve tax situation for the present and the future.
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