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Tax Software Survey

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2009. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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Tax Software Survey

Here are highlights of the JofA’s 2009 tax software survey, conducted jointly with The Tax Adviser. Nearly 10,000 AICPA members responded.

FULL RESULTS

More detailed results are available here and includes complete responses for each product, including many questions not shown here, such as ease of learning the software and how hard it was to get technical support. The Tax Adviser has a complete article about the survey and product information provided by the vendors, including prices, new features and contact information.

 

Click below to see the results:

 

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Overall Rating
Question: What overall rating would you give your tax preparation software? Please rate on a scale of “1” to “5” where “1” means “very bad” and “5” means “very good.”

The previous JofA tax software survey, conducted in 2007, showed similar results. In that survey, UltraTax scored the highest rating, followed by Drake; GoSystem had the lowest overall rating. (See “Users Grade Tax Software,” JofA, Oct. 07, page 34.)

Product Market Share
Question: What tax preparation software did you predominantly use to prepare 2008 tax returns for clients or for your company?

ProSystem fx retained its No. 1 position among all respondents, increasing its lead over No. 2 Lacerte from four percentage points in 2007 to nearly nine points this year.

 

Features Liked Best
Question: What do you like best about your 2008 tax preparation software? (choose one)

“Ease of use” topped the list of features liked best across all products. Intuit’s products led that category, with 48.8% of TurboTax users selecting it as their favorite feature, followed by 41.2% for ProSeries users and 38.3% for Lacerte users.

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Features Liked Least
Question: What do you like least about your 2008 tax preparation software? (choose one)

“Price” was the feature that users liked least across all products. Lacerte users expressed the highest percentage of price dissatisfaction, at 52.5%, followed by UltraTax CS in close second with 51.9% of its users choosing price as the feature they liked least.