In 2011, I sold some stocks and had some dividend income [1] so I briefly considered using an accountant to file my taxes. However, since last year’s experience with TurboTax [2] was so smooth, I decided to give it another try. Once again, I was impressed by the ease with which TurboTax [3] handled my increasingly complicated tax situation.
TurboTax Import Feature
This year I used TurboTax’s [3] import feature for the first time. I am usually pretty savvy when it comes to my tax forms [4] but when I received my 1099 [5] from ShareBuilder [6], I honestly had no idea what to do with it.
I decided to try the import feature and it could not have been easier – I entered my Sharebuilder account number into TurboTax and it took all of 2 minutes for them to retrieve and fill in all of my stock info.
Filing my Taxes
Filing my taxes was once again very simple. TurboTax looked for missed deductions, credits and incomplete information and once they confirmed everything was good to go, it took me only minutes to save my state and federal returns [7] as a PDF and then file the returns.
I received two e-mails confirming my submission, but about an hour later, I received an e-mail saying my state return had been rejected. It was nice that TurboTax [3]Â mentioned that this happens often and gave me simple instructions on how to try again and on how to obtain my state PIN (omitting that had caused the rejection). Just a short time later, I received e-mails confirming that both returns had been accepted.
Overall Summary
Once again, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend TurboTax [3] for anyone with a relatively simple tax situation. The TurboTax community is great for Q&A and the import feature made a potentially complicated situation a cinch. In fact, I’ll be using it to help my sister file her return before the tax deadline [8]!