Jack C.

I moved to TaxAct based on its positive reviews after having a bad experience with TurboTax's handling of a rental property sale. See my review on this site.

TaxAct provided a similar data entry experience as Turbo Tax, although the detail differences took a few minutes to adapt to.

TA capably handled W2 and 1099 inputs, and was thorough with rental property expense categories. I had no trouble with the real estate sale data entry.

They have very few financial firms on their download list, so lots of data entry for me.

TA appears to be more rigorous than TurboTax in their use of every line in the applicable tax forms. This is good for finding every tax deduction opportunity. It does mean more reading lines in forms that turn out to be unnecessary.

Overall a good experience. I intend to use TaxAct next year.

I have used TurboTax for many years. It appeared to competently handle my consulting engineering work, investments and a single family rental property. I found the interface easy to use and liked the bringing data from the previous year into the next year's return. I did find TT's ability to pull data from financial accounts to be inconsistent, requiring me to carefully review with plenty of data entry.

We sold the rental last year, and found TurboTax Premier not up to the challenge of such a common transaction.
1. Depreciation on improvements had occurred ONLY the year the asset was installed. These were installed over 2 different years; new roof, new well, paved driveway.
2. I was unable to add those assets to the tax basis for the sale. Found I could NOT edit my attempts. Each try added new assets with no connection to the rental property.
4. TurboTax chat advised I clear my file and start over! I did this once but had the same problem.

Had I stayed with TurboTax, the sale would have been about $9k taxable profit

Bought TaxAct Premier for about $100. No troubles with the property sale.

The program also prompted me to the Carry Forward of disallowed losses section. This provided the significant taxable losses from the past to be reported.

Result was a small taxable loss on the sale, and a significant deduction for the carryovers.

I went from TurboTax's calculated tax bill of nearly $10k to a tax return of about $10k. Yes-almost $20k difference.

NOTE product scores are for TurboTax Premier.