The simple reality of tax preparation software is this: You want to get the greatest possible refund with the least chance of an audit, all without requiring you to be a tax genius. In the not-so-distant past, the only option I considered for preparing my taxes was paying $250 to sit at a tax prep office while someone went through my numbers. But then I found out that the professionals I paid used software similar to what I could buy for my Mac. While some tax preparation may still require you to use a tax professional, these days, professional quality tax preparation is just a few dollars and a download away. While H&R Block Premium has gotten better at hiding the details behind your return, some aspects of the app can still be overwhelming.

While there are a number of online options for preparing taxes, if you prefer to use software installed on your Mac instead of a Web-based app, then there are really only two contenders for your tax prep dollars: and Intuit’s. Both of these apps come in several different flavors designed to meet your specific tax filing requirements, but for the purposes of this review we looked at the top level tax prep applications, and, as they both include everything you need to file your personal taxes, even if your filing needs are somewhat complicated.

The April 15 deadline for filing income tax returns draws perilously close, forcing Mac users to gather up their W-2s, 1099s, and tax-preparation program of choice.

If accuracy is important—when it comes to taxes, you better bet that it is—then there’s not much to worry about with either of these two applications. After entering a basic set of numbers, including W-2 income, college tuition expenses, interest and dividend income, mortgage interest, and a variety of other bits of income and expense information, H&R Block Premium and TurboTax came back with numbers that were exactly the same for my state return and within a dollar of each other for my federal return. From my perspective, simplicity is the key to tax prep software. What simplifies the tax filing process is a subjective assessment, but for me simplicity means the application dispenses a minimum of tax jargon while walking you through the process of entering income and expense information, and eliminates confusion as to whether you’ve included all the forms you need and provided all the information necessary to avoid an audit and still get the best possible refund. In short, the best tax app should instill confidence by giving you a sense that everything you’ve done is complete and correct. A new feature in TurboTax now explains why the information you've entered has changed something on your return.

Acer xb27ohu attachment for mac. While H&R Block has a much improved interview process, TurboTax is, hands down, the better of the two applications when it comes to instilling this kind of confidence. Both applications use a step-by-step process to guide you, but the H&R Block application tends to use pages filled with checkboxes to determine which questions you’ll be asked and those you won’t. TurboTax’s interview process asks questions one at a time and then, depending on how you answer, walks you through specific tax questions based upon your answers. While the end result was the same, I found that TurboTax’s question and answer format left me less worried that I’d left something undone. While the H&R Block interview process was not as clear, the H&R Block application offers stellar, free, live, online access to tax professionals who can walk you through sticky points of your tax return.

Follow these instructions to download and use the Office 365 apps for your iPhone or iPad. The Microsoft Office 365 apps enables you to view, edit, and share Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents as well as create Word and Excel Documents. Requires iOS 7.0 or later, and are compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.