This Tax Season, Avoid Intuit

This was emailed to me by a guy I know. Thought I’d post this rather than spam people with it. The source is pretty capable and thoughtful person who can probably be relied on to comprehend the tech issues he comments on.

TurboTax Nightmares

Some of you are undoubtedly much further ahead than I am and have
already filed your taxes. I, unfortunately, have not filed yet; I will
not be able to file for at least a few more days.

The reason, as you may have already surmised, is Intuit’s TurboTax. I
have used this product in the past with ease and turned to again for
this year’s tax filings for that reason. Unfortunately, Intuit has
changed their product activation to include installation of SafeCast’s
C-Dilla. C-Dilla is essentially software which enables single machine
use of TurboTax. Most spyware programs include it in their hit lists.
Although some have described scenarios of it disabling CDR-W drives if
it determines that you are copying copyrighted material, a post on
extremetech.com negates this premise. There is much on the web about
the snafus associated with TurboTax, some right and some wrong, but I
must say that the product is getting a pounding on the Amazon review
board.

If you were like me (and many others evidently) that had issues with
TurboTax’s “One-Click” updates, I had a much more difficult time with
both TurboTax and C-Dilla than was warned in License Agreement. I was
told by tech support that I needed to re-install TurboTax when the
“one-click” failed. Silly me, I tried to uninstall TurboTax first.
This then prevented me from not only installing it again, as per their
directions, but it also prevented me from booting in safe mode, as per
their directions. In the end, it has taken two days to uninstall
TurboTax and I am still not sure if C-Dilla is fully uninstalled.
According to some posts, C-Dilla hides several files in different
registry locations to make sure that only a full scrubbing of the hard
drive will remove it. Intuit, to its credit (I guess) is now posting
an uninstall utility for C-Dilla and they have refunded my money. I
wanted to pass on this personal testimony, as sometimes you read posts
that seem too far-fetched to be believed. My situation is not too
far-fetched, but I now strongly discourage use of this product.

Somebody said that H & R Block’s TaxCut worked well for them…

For any Canadians reading, no worries you got a couple more weeks.

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