This was my first time using TT. I bought the Premier edition to be able to handle my ESPP, NQSO and ISO options and to compute my AMT which (this is the first year I've been hit by that). BTW, on the topic of company stock plans, I strongly recommend Kaye Thomas' book "Consider Your Options". TT made the process go a little faster except for all the time I spent on online chats and on phone tech support calls to eventually learn that TT could not support my situation without hacking my numbers or moving transations into different categories from where they should really go. More on this below.
As for ESPP, NQSO and ISO handling for the Schedule D, TT provides a relatively easy way to do the computations that I've always done myself in the past. Was it worth the $50+ for the Premier edition? For me, since I've done that before and I feel confident in how to do that, I'd have to honestly say, "no". If you know how to calculate the basis and gains for these transations and you've done it before, all TT will do will make it slightly easier. If you do not know how to do this or would rather not work out the numbers yourself then TT would be good for you in this area.
The biggest problem I had is that I had a wash sale in a previous year involving some ESPP stock and TT Premier was not able to account for this. I was eventually told this by an upper echelon tech guy. He also told me he "couldn't legally" recommend alternatives to solve my problem but that I could try fudging my ESPP input numbers to try to get the right basis result or I could delete the ESPP transation from the ESPP section and log it as a personal stock transaction (I ended up doing the latter). This of course meant that I had to compute all the numbers myself for this transaction, but I had done that for all my transactions to double check TT anyway (it did a perfect job except for it's inability to allow me to adjust my basis because of the previous wash-sale). I probably spent a total of 4 hours waiting for live chat sessions and on the phone to get help on this issue and was disappointed when they eventually said "TT can't handle that." and "This is the first time we've ever heard of this happening." I admit my situation may not be normal, perhaps some might even call it rare, but I was still disappointed with TT"s lack of flexibility here. So if you think your taxes are pretty normal for a given year, TT is nice, but if you have any irregularities, be aware that it might not be flexible enough to handle your situation.
As for AMT (pretty much the SOLE reason I got it) it did just fine though I would have liked better explanations as it walked me through the AMT section of the interview. When it asks me if I have "mining costs" I am pretty sure I can answer "no" but when it starts asking me strange things about "depreciation" I'm left thinking "well... I don't know anything about depreciation and never put anything about depreciation on the rest of my tax form (I don't own my own business) so... I guess I should answer "no", but the help in the AMT interview didn't make me all that confident that I wasn't missing something here. I had read the AMT form and instructions and they left me with similar feelings of doubt. I was hoping TT would do a little more in explaining the requests for information required for the AMT form but it mostly didn't. Still, it gives me some piece of mind to have TT fill out the form (even though it ended up looking just like what I would have done).
As for next year, it will be my first year filing for credit for paying AMT in a previous year. I haven't decided yet whether or not to use TT again. I'll probably look at the AMT credit form and assuming it is simple enough (I expect it to be straightforward) I'll probably just do my taxes by hand as I've always done before.
I gave 3 stars since I think the rating for TT depends on your level of expertise. For me it was more like 1 or 2 stars since I know how to do my taxes by hand and I really was just looking for some confirmation about how to fill out the AMT form. It was worth it for me to do this though I doubt I'd use TT again, though to be fair it's nice to have TT do the math and double check your filing for common errors. For people who are not confident about doing their taxes by hand AND whose taxes are relatively simple, I'm sure they'll like TT.Get more detail about TurboTax Premier Federal Returns 2005 Win/Mac [Old Version].
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