First off, thank you for taking some of your valuable time to read and reply!
I am a first time filer and I have already filed for my 1120S extension. Now, I am trying to understand the difference between Turbotax Business Desktop ($190) and Turbotax Small Business Online (~$490)! Based on what I read, there is no difference in functionality - you get all the tax forms in both and you also get tax expert guidance in both - so why $300 difference (that's a lot in absolute terms and bonkers in % terms)? In addition to price advantage, Desktop version gives direct access to the forms, lets you make manual edits, allows up to 5 returns for free (vs just 1 for Online) and finally, since it is sold at Big Box retailers, you may even get more discounts on the price!
This is America and there are no free lunches - a product with more features sell for more, which is mostly true even for products across the brands and almost always true within the same brand! So this is a head-scratcher for sure.
Minor downsides that I can see with Desktop version are as follows
- You need to have a "private" computer (which is not a big deal these days. Honestly, it is preferred for online version too)
- You have to download and install the software (not a major inconvenience these days)
- You have to keep installing new software for each tax year (this can be a little bit of a pain once you have > 10 years of returns). I have a question on this too - can you not open 2023 tax file with 2024 or later software?
- You will not have access to your taxes without your private computer (not a big deal if you print your tax forms as pdf and put them on cloud drives like Google, OneDrive etc)
- You will not have the ability to delegate the whole tax filing to a tax expert with Desktop version (this could be a big deal for some but one could do that with their local tax expert)
All the downsides, except installing new software every year, are not really downsides to me. So, I must be missing something! What is that I am missing? Thank you all in advance!
