Mac Tax Prep Software, Where Art Thou?

While shopping this weekend, I couldn't help but notice the great deals on and scads of boxes of Intuit's TurboTax and Kipplinger TaxCut at our local Micro Center and CompUSAs. Norton software and Quicken 2000 along with State return software are bundled with the tax preparation software. I saw bundles as low as $7+ with rebates. The catch, of course, is that they are all for Windows. I found a few boxes of MacInTax at $50 at just one CompUSA--this includes one free state return. A second state return usually costs nearly $30, making MacInTax about an $80 cost to me.

Last year (1998 tax year) I finally gave up on being ripped off for over $100 by Intuit and tried TaxCut Deluxe for Windows on Virtual PC, $20 on sale. The reason is that I have to file two state returns and they were free downloads to the Windows version. The Mac version of TaxCut was a bit more expensive and it required me to buy a $25 state return CD. TaxCut on Virtual PC worked fine until I had to print the graphics files for the state returns and couldn't, at least not darkly enough for anyone to review them if they wanted to. I had to move the files to a real Wintel to print them out which is a whole other story.

This year (1999 tax year), the state CD is "free" ($5.95 S&H) with the Mac version of TaxCut ($25) so I'll skip the possible Virtual PC printing hassle (VPC 3's print driver was updated), forego the unneeded Wintel software and forego the minor savings. For the few extra dollars I want to support H&R Block for maintaining the Mac version. In my opinion, TaxCut is at least as good as MacInTax which I've used for many years before last year.

Meanwhile, Intuit announced that it is dropping MacInTax for Business according to this MacWEEK article and recommends migrating to the TurboTax Windows PC version. TaxCut doesn't have a Business edition for the Mac so businesses will need a Wintel or Virtual PC.