The most outstanding feature of Tax ACT is its price coming in at a very cost effective $16.95 Tax Cut Ultimate package especially considering it offers both Federal and state filing. This service supports federal and 43 state electronic filings. You can print and mail as many copies as you want (one can never be too paranoid about taxes).

As with other tax preparation software, it comes with an easy to use interface as well as the standard questionnaire/interview format to help you navigate your tax returns with ease. Not only that, they have totally embraced new technologies and offer introductory videos to help you along the way. To top it off, there is a searchable Help Center where you can find support by keyword.

Tax ACT is a class act and it is no wonder that it won the “TopTenREVEWS Bronze Award” for 2009.

Tax ACT comes in Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate versions

* Standard - Free version with e-file for a federal return, but does not include access to online support materials.

* Deluxe - Includes expert tax help and advice. Deluxe is priced at $7.95, plus an additional $9.95 for state. Surprisingly, Deluxe supports a number of income streams that are only supported by the $80 and up ‘Home & Business’ versions of other tax preparation software. It covers investments, home ownership, securities, and rental income.

* Ultimate - Essentially a bundled version of the deluxe includes both Federal and State tax returns for $16.95

ADVANTAGES OF TAX CUT ULTIMATE

1. Tax ACT Ultimate Online has phased out the manual form entry instead offering a streamlined interview process that’s so simple to follow. Were it not for the fact we are dealing with taxes here, I venture to say while using this software you’ll almost forget that this is a tax-related service.

2. Investors can import capital gains transactions from programs such as GainsKeeper©.

3. Tax Act provides the “Life Events” a nifty and handy feature. The “life events” feature has the ability to determine the future tax impact of life events such as marriage, adding children to your family, income adjustments, divorce and more.

4. Tax ACT Ultimate Package guarantee their calculations. In fact, they will pay your penalties and interest if the software makes a calculation error.

5. Once your federal 1040 is completed, the state return only takes a matter of minutes to complete because all it does is automatically transfer federal information.

6. Tax ACT Ultimate is also available in a software download version for $19.95 and a CD for an additional $5.95. The software includes federal and state filing and all of the convenient features of the online version. The advantage of the software version is you can use the same program each year as long as you update the software.

CONS OF TAX CUT ULTIMATE

1. The disadvantage is that you have to install the software on your computer, update it yearly, and it costs $5 more than the online version plus shipping fees.

2. Tax ACT’s interface is considerably less sophisticated and therefore more tedious than its higher priced competitors. For example only one interview question is presented per page, so it can be extremely difficult to click back through to a specific form.

3.The tiny font makes it so that the menu options are particularly prone to mis-clicks.

4.Interview questions are filled with tax language that the average filer might not always understand.

5.Tax ACT will not import data from Quicken or any other tax service.

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Filed under: Tax Software Reviews

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