I agree with all your comments.
My issue really is about the software not asking the questions clearly enough so the user could understand what is being requested. Also, the 1099-R form and all its worksheets are terrible, especially the B-1 to B-8 lines. I have quite a bit of experience in taxation and had to go back to IRC to figure out how to answer the questions to get TurboTax to treat everything correctly. And still, I had to answer some questions "incorrectly" to get the correct tax result. Not something the average user would be able to do.
I'm a long term TurboTax user (20+ years) and I really like the software. It's certainly better than the competition. But...
There have been numerous time over the years where the interview questions caused an incorrect tax result because of the vagueness of the Interview questions or worksheet questions. As a result, I resorted to reproducing my taxes in Excel before I submit them. In some cases, I've had to make corrections in TurboTax up to $5,000 in tax liability in one direction or another.
Also, there have been many cases over the years when I knew the correct tax treatment of an item, but had to figure out how to "stump" TurboTax into getting the correct tax results. A user shouldn't have to spend time figuring out how to find workarounds to get the software to produce a correct tax result.
I'm venting here because it's been a tough TurboTax tax year for me, where there were at least three maddening things I had do to cause TurbotTax to get the correct result in spite of itself, and it makes me wonder how someone with less experience might be able to figure this out.
Thanks,
Steve
