Turbo Tax vs Tax Act
Which is Best?

OK. We are down to that yearly last minute crunch time… but people still want to know which they should trust with their taxes. The shortest easiest answer is, use the same service you used last year. Both of these and most of the services will import tons of data, automatically, from the previous tax filing. That saves a lot of time, makes for less mistakes AND can help you catch mistakes or omissions from the previous filing(s). So, especially if you have put off doing the deed til today, that is the best answer.

I did not wait ‘til THE last day, just the day before… so, this time, I had a little bit of time to play with both softwares. To me, Turbo tax is a hair less intuitive, but more like filling out the actual paperwork, by hand. I think Tax Act might be a little more clumsy of an interface and it tried harder to upsell me to other versions and services. It is, however, who I submitted my filing with. There were many more questions, esp of ones that relate to business operations, that in Turbo Tax. Plus, as noted, this was apparently who I filed with last year and at several key places in the Q&A Tax Act showed me a side by side comparison of 2012 and 2013, which was quite helpful.

I played with both last year as well. This year, when trying to log back in, I found TA had a harder time confirming who I was and getting everything up and running. I did, however, find it easier in TA to revise numbers on the fly as my wife was generating more accurate figures.
I believe, last year was the first time I completed the process with TA instead of Turbo Tax. Every year, there are little tweaks and differences in the interface and navigation tools. For some reason, I felt in 2012 that TA was out-performing TT. This year as well, it seems there were some things TT was not asking me, such as interest paid on a student loans. I found that deduction category, but never the specific place to input that figure.

TAX ACT you are the winner! (for this year, at least)