Nevius: Well, I feel for that respondent. I'm not sure how any software could keep up this year.' Here's the comment: 'Updates took awhile, states took longer, terrible busy season. We have a few of the write-in comments, and I'd like you to respond to those comments, I believe Alistair first. Those are all things we ask about, too, and often tax software is liked for those reasons.Īmato: Next, we're going to go into the write-in comment section of this episode. Things they like about their software often are its accuracy, its ease of use, how comprehensive it is, and the number of tax forms it contains. There are a few, say, three of them for which that's not as big a concern, but for the seven, what I call the the major products, the ones who account for most of our responses, that's something they dislike. I'm not sure why - they seem to cost a lot, most of them. Paul Bonner: Well, Neil, every year we can count on our respondents to dislike the price of their software.

Getting into more specifics on that, what are some of the highlights of those responses? We ask about a wide variety of features so that when readers are looking at the survey results, we hope they get a clear overall picture of how users liked each software package.Īmato: For Paul, the respondents, as Alistair mentioned, were asked about likes and dislikes. We asked questions about how they liked the different aspects of the software so that we can capture a good overall picture of each software package. We asked them about 13 different tax software packages, from the big and popular to some of the smaller ones.

We ask them, if they have prepared tax returns for compensation, to evaluate the software that they used to prepare returns that year.Īs you mentioned, we got 2,100 responses this year, which is a nice cross-section of the tax practitioner community. The survey goes out every year to members of the AICPA who are tax professionals. First, for Alistair, can you just give us an overview of the survey?Īlistair Nevius: Sure, Neil. Also, we have editors Alistair Nevius and Paul Bonner on the podcast to discuss the findings.

The survey's findings are covered in depth in both The Tax Adviser and the JofA and that coverage will be linked in the show notes for this episode. That survey is the focus of this episode, and you'll hear more on it after this word from our sponsor.Īmato: This year, more than 2,100 tax professionals evaluated the software they used to prepare 2020 tax returns. The Tax Adviser and the Journal of Accountancy have published annual surveys since the mid-1990s about what practitioners like and dislike about their tax preparation software. Neil Amato: Welcome back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. To comment on this podcast episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato, a JofA senior editor, at.

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