Has Intuit Made Good on DRM Removal?

M-G asks: "It's tax time again in the US. Last year, Slashdot and other sites were abuzz with Intuit's use of activation software in TurboTax. As a result, many long time TurboTax users, myself included, sought alternatives last year and wrote Intuit to tell them so. After tax season, Intuit said they would drop DRM from future TurboTax releases and other products sold in retail packaging. While I have no reason to assume that Intuit lied, they did violate my trust last year. So, has anyone confirmed that this year's TurboTax is indeed free of DRM? What about products like Quicken?"

Comments

Why pay for this software?

[TheRealMindChild]

Intuit, as well as H&R Block I think, offer an online version of their software. For turbotax.com, visit http://www.webturbotax.com

It's free to use, you simply pay for submission. You always know you are working off of their latest "updates", and no DRM will get in the way. It is Non-IE browser friendly too... and you don't have to buy an upgrade every year.

Re:Why pay for this software?

[admiral2001]

What a rip! You can buy that retail for about $30,

Or much cheaper. It's been around $20 at staples for a while.
http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/Sku.asp?Page Type=1&Sku=521733

And for reference, I bought it because:

• I don't feel comfortable putting all my financial information online in one place
• I like playing with my taxes a lot playing various 'what-if' scenarios which I may not quite want to put out there
• I want to make sure that if I reopen my tax return from the past year(s), they will stay the same, using the same program, etc.

TaxAct

[Mr. Darl McBride]

I'd like to pimp TaxAct. It's pretty much a clone of TurboTax with a much sexier & cleaner UI and a cool tax reference book attached.

I love it because the developers are accessible and willing to listen and respond to feature requests, it runs under wine, and for straightforward taxes, it imports the previous year's data, asks if you've done any of a few major things this year, takes your W2 data, and completes the current year in no time flat.

You can buy and download the thing online, and there's zero copyright protection. They even encourage you to do multiple returns with it, so you can split the cost with a few coworkers without really breaking the rules.

Re:TaxAct

[Mr. Darl McBride]

and there's zero copyright protection

I meant zero copy protection -- no mechanical means of twarting duplication. Yes, there is copyright protection, as in someone owns and doubtlessly enforces the copyright.

Save your time -- ditch the software entirely

[Deagol]

I've been a long-time user of Turbo tax (since early '90s). Last year, after the whole copy protection thing, I switched to TaxACT (per a recommendation here on Slashdot -- good advice, BTW).

This year, I decided my time was just too scarce, so I went to H&R Block. It cost me about $200 (which I can write off next year), but I got a lot more back than I would have otherwise. I even paid for their little audit guarantee (I'm sure it's about as valuable as an extended warranty at Circuit City, but the $27 seemed reasonable).

Now I'm not endorsing H&R Block specifically, but I'd say most of us profressionals here on /. would be better served by simply having a professional do their taxes for them, whether it be a tax return mill like H&R Block, the neighborhood CPA, or someone else. I can tell you that I'll never go back to doing it myself.

And yes, I'm the type of guy who's more than willing to take his car to the local shop for a oil change and lube for $30 than waste the time on it himself.

My wife and kids see far less of me than I like already. Life's too short to piss it away on oil changes and tax returns. :)

Re:They have made good I think

[Otter]

Out of curiosity, are your friends all in this supposedly huge group of users who do their taxes on multiple computers? Or are they "violating the trust" that Intuit has now placed in them?

No protection for me, State or Federal.

[Talonius]

Someone else said they had GUID based protection but as far as I could tell that's complete bull.

I purchased TurboTax in January while I was on the road. I installed it onto my laptop and put all the preliminary information in place. February 2 my state was ready for download and purchase and I received my second mortgage statement so I installed TurboTax onto my desktop, moved the file over, purchased and downloaded TurboTax State, efiled, and had my refund on February 6th from the state and February 9th from the Federal.

No protection on TurboTax on either Federal or State that I saw.

As for Quicken I've been using it since Quicken for DOS and I've yet to see copy protection on it. The downloadable trials have protection on them ala you can purchase it; and the Quicken Basic version comes with the ability to upgrade to Deluxe by purchasing a key from Intuit, but I've never had a problem with copy protection.

I think in THAT arena it would be suicide. If I lost a computer and had to fight a software company to get my finances back I'd be ticked.