Intuit TurboTax Home & Business Federal + State 2007
Date Published: 2/25/08
TurboTax Home & Business 2007 is designed for taxpayers who are sole proprietors, consultants, contractors or single-owner LLCs. This essentially includes most non-incorporated small business owners who file business and personal taxes together.
The tabbed interface groups similar information, so you can quickly jump back and forth between sections as needed. In addition to providing easy access to each section, the tabs also represent the suggested order of completion.
The now-standard interview approach gathers information and helps you complete your tax return, and includes all necessary forms and schedules. You can also go directly to any of the forms or schedules and manually enter or edit information.
The Maximize Business Deductions feature will help you decide which approach is better: claiming depreciation over time or all at once. It will also show you what similar businesses typically write off as business expenses. If you own rental property, TurboTax will walk you through the process of reporting rental-related depreciation and expenses.
TurboTax Home & Business 2007 offers a number of attractive features for its target market, but it has a few issues, mainly related to cost and Intuit's ever-present desire to sell related services. Unlike many programs -- and online versions of TurboTax -- that include at least one e-file, you'll have to pay an additional $17.95 for up to five federal e-filings, and another $17.95 for up to three state e-filings. Additionally, during the course of the business portion of the interview, TurboTax noticed that our filer names and business name were different and offered to file a DBA (Doing Business As) form for our company. Intuit's suggested price for this service was $233; we can file the form ourselves for about $75.
TurboTax Home & Business 2007 is versatile and easy to navigate with many helpful tools, but Intuit's main innovation this year seems to be finding more ways to make money through add-on services.
Pros: User interface is streamlined and easy to use
Cons: E-filing is a significant added cost, too much built-in selling of services




