Tax season cometh

kw: taxes, software

Every season is getting earlier every year. Stores put up their Christmas displays on November 17. Now here it is December 14, and the tax software promotional from H&R Block arrived. We have been using their Tax Cut software a few years. This year it is called H&R Block At Home™.

This is no software review. You'll get a great review of the top ten tax preparation programs at Top10Reviews.com. This is a product endorsement. To see this sample screen shot, click on the image. The "big" image is still undersized, but gives you an idea of how the screens look.

We used several products over the past nine or ten years, and have settled on this one. The offer we got, at $14.95 including a free e-file, really puts pressure on tax preparation services.

We have a friend who runs a tax preparation company. Their bread-and-butter used to be the yearly January-to-April tax season. Now it is the quarterly Estimated Tax and Business tax filings. Personal taxes have dropped way off. At $125, more and more people are climbing the learning curve so they can prepare and file their taxes on their own computer, often for free. Some who can't afford a computer, but must still file tax forms, use free computers at the library and a free online service (HR Block has one of those also).

We won't get W-2 forms for another month or so, but the tax software folks already got their foot in the door.