H&R Block Tax Software Premium 2015 Federal & State

I found the help index less helpful than in prior years. I almost paid over $4,000 too much in taxes due to a couple of mistakes on my tax return. I think that the software could have been more helpful in finding these errors. One involved a healthcare interview to find out if you have to pay the Obomacare tax. Since I did not find the interview on my first pass, I was assessed over $3,000 for my wife and my not having health insurace. Actually, we did have health insurance and when I finally found the healthcare interview and did it, the taxes went down $3,000. Antoher error that I made was qualified dividends. I entered my dividend amount but did not enter the qualified amount. This would have cost me $1,500. It used to be that HR Block was better than Turbo Tax, but I may try Turbo Tax next year.

An excellent way of doing your taxes. Some of the technical terms were not clarified. Also, it is easy to enter your deductions twice erroneously, if you do Schedule C and also Schedule A. But otherwise, it is fairly comprehensive, and is infinitely better than trying to do it yourself. What I like especially is you can readily see how much of a refund or you owe as you are doing it.

My experience with the software started out well enough - the program installed and started up easily and began with the usual questions of name, SSN, contents of the various boxes of the W2, etc. As time went on, however, it became apparent that the product was slapped together hastily and rushed out the door so as to start making money for the manufacturer as quickly as possible. How else to explain this screen I came across? Special Case Applies for 1040, Line 10. Your tax situation is a special case. To figure the amount for Form 1040, line 10 see the recoveries section of IRS Publication 525: Taxable and Nontaxable Income. Tell us the amount you figured for line 10. The whole purpose of buying the software is to keep me from having to read IRS publications and figure out what to put in the various lines and boxes... the software is supposed to tell me that! Even worse, my special case was not all that special - I had a state income tax refund last year and also paid AMT last year. At any rate, I dutifully read Publication 525 and, after about an hour, figured out what was supposed to go into line 10; something that turned out to be easily programmable if the manufacturers could be troubled to do so. I continued onward and later was flummoxed by the question, Is Rent Amount for this Rentals and Royalties Worksheet? [Yes/No] I still, to this day, dont know what was actually meant by this question - I ended up having to figure out the answer by putting Yes and seeing what the program did with the tax forms and then by putting No and seeing what that did. To the best of my knowledge (after another hour or two of study), No proved to be the correct answer but I am sure the IRS will set me straight if Ive gotten it wrong... many years ago I had gone to an H&R Block brick and mortar establishment and had them fill out my taxes. A couple of months later, I got a very politely written letter from the IRS explaining that I had figured my taxes incorrectly and sent them too much money. To save me some time, they were just going to assume that I redid my taxes according to what they figured for me and they just went ahead and sent me a check for the amount that I overpaid. Anyway, I pressed onward through the program, answering questions such as Tell us on which copy of your worksheet you want to report your rents via trial and error (0 resulted in an error but the program seemed happy with 1) until I got to the end and filed the taxes electronically. Incidentally, electronically filing with the IRS is free but electronically filing with a state costs $19.95 extra... After I filed, I reviewed the forms that were printed out for my records only to discover (even with my rudimentary tax knowledge) that the program had entered double the proper number for the rents that I had collected. Turns out that the program had asked me for the rents Id collected twice but the second time it was asking me for ADDITIONAL rents collected that I had not told it about on the first screen. Naively, I entered the same figure on both screens when I was supposed to enter the proper figure on the first screen and zero on the second screen. The mistake ended up resulting in me being charged about $7000 additional tax so naturally a refile was in order. Unfortunately, the IRS does not accept electronic refiles and H&R has apparently never tested the refile portion of their program on live humans beings so the refiling ended up being even more arduous than the original filing. I think Ive got the proper forms printed out now but, again, Im sure the nice folks at the IRS will let me know if I havent got it all straight. At any rate, I wont be using this product for the next tax season; instead Ill go with something less painful such as sawing at my wrists with a rusted razor blade in hopes that I bleed to death prior to April 15th.

Easy to use and very complete.

I have been using HRBlock for quite some time (7 years). It has what I need to file my Rental property filing. It is not as User Friendly, probably than Turbo Tax, which I had used in the past. I changed in 2009 to HRBlock because I had to use an HR Block office to file my 2008, After that, I started using its software instead..

It was exactly what it was supposed to be

This software was worthless it would not allow me to update so I really couldn’t use it

I usually have no problem completing my taxes with the Block software. This year, I sold a rental property and thought it would be easy to follow the Block instructions. I had to go to a tax consultant to complete taxes this year.

The software often went into a view mode that couldnt be scrolled. I then had to shut the software down and restart. Also, when I had to go back to add data, it didnt correct taxes owed or amount of refund properly. There may be a mistake in my taxes that Im not aware of. One other important point - deductions for self-employed had only some items listed, I had to call up Form C to list all deductions. Ive used this software for five years and there is always a problem of some kind. I may go back to Turbo Tax next year.

It does what it needs to do, with helps along the way at no charge.