Tax software for Mac review: A much-improved H&R Block still bows to Intuit TurboTax

Jeffery Battersby for MacWorld writes: The simple reality of tax preparation software is this: You want to get the greatest possible refund with the least chance of an audit, all without requiring you to be a tax genius. In the not-so-distant past, the only option I considered for preparing my taxes was paying $250 to sit at a tax prep office while someone went through my numbers. But then I found out that the professionals I paid used software similar to what I could buy for my Mac. While some tax preparation may still require you to use a tax professional, these days, professional quality tax preparation is just a few dollars and a download away.

While H&R Block Premium has gotten better at hiding the details behind your return, some aspects of the app can still be overwhelming.

While there are a number of online options for preparing taxes, if you prefer to use software installed on your Mac instead of a Web-based app, then there are really only two contenders for your tax prep dollars: H&R Block and Intuit’s TurboTax. Both of these apps come in several different flavors designed to meet your specific tax filing requirements, but for the purposes of this review we looked at the top level tax prep applications,H&R Block Premium and TurboTax Premier, as they both include everything you need to file your personal taxes, even if your filing needs are somewhat complicated.

If accuracy is important—when it comes to taxes, you better bet that it is—then there’s not much to worry about with either of these two applications. After entering a basic set of numbers, including W-2 income, college tuition expenses, interest and dividend income, mortgage interest, and a variety of other bits of income and expense information, H&R Block Premium and TurboTax came back with numbers that were exactly the same for my state return and within a dollar of each other for my federal return. [Snip]  The Article Continues @ MacWorld.com, click here.