H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online (Tax Year 2012)

No personal tax preparation software/website publisher has a range of offerings as broad as H&R Block, understandably. Industry veteran Intuit is a relative upstart compared to H&R Block, which has been providing tax services since 1955. The company employs more than 100,000 tax professionals worldwide and has prepared more than 550 million tax returns worldwide. This year, we've reviewed H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online .

H&R Block's digital presence is considerable. It has competed alongside Intuit and 2nd Story Software for years, first as a publisher of personal tax preparation software, and then as the host for matching websites. You can use these products entirely on your own, or you can ask questions along the way of H&R Block staff. You can prepare your return and then have a company representative review it, correct as necessary and sign it as the preparer of record.

And you can participate in a videoconference remotely with a representative, just as if you'd walked into a physical H&R Block office. Starting with the 2012 tax year, you will be able to do the latter on your iPad, and you can maintain a year-round conversation with H&R Block experts, even saving relevant documents to a personal portal as you acquire them, so that you don't have such a mad scramble at prep time.

Interpreting the Arcane
Like TurboTax?and TaxACT, H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online helps you complete your 1040 and its related forms and schedules in a fashion that's much easier and more understandable than sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of paper forms and a lot of apprehension.

Over the years, H&R Block has continued to hone its web-based version of an in-person sit-down with a company representative. The live interview that you do when you visit one of the company's offices translates well to the approach that all tax preparation websites take: They ask you questions and provide fields or checklists or other conventions for your answers, and then they drop those answers in the correct fields on the actual IRS forms and schedules.

When you've answered all of the questions about your federal return, the service can use that information to work on any state returns required. The website does all of the calculating, and it combs your return for errors and omissions, insisting on correct responses before it lets you print the return or file it electronically.

Navigation is simple and straightforward. You advance through the interview by clicking "Back" and "Next" buttons (but the latter doesn't work unless you've completed the current screen, a departure from what competitors allow). A series of buttons in the upper right corner takes you to a chronological, interactive index of the site's topics; a utility that produces a link to the appropriate form when you enter a topic (new in the online version); your "bookmarks" (a list of pages where you've indicated you're missing information); and site utilities.

Help From the Pros
All of the tax sites we reviewed this year try to do three things primarily: help you fill out your forms as completely and accurately as you can; try to lower your tax obligation as much as is legally possible; and move you through the preparation process as quickly and painlessly as it can. So H&R Block, like its competitors, begins by asking for personal information (names, Social Security numbers, etc.) and then presenting you with a comprehensive list of the issues that are addressed within the IRS Form 1040 and its accompanying forms and schedules (employment wages, investments, interest income, mortgage interest, medical expenses, etc.). You check the ones that apply to you, and the step-by-step interview process begins.

As you go, H&R Block provides support for the challenging task. Some words and phrases within the site's interview questions are hyperlinked, and clicking on them opens a window containing a more complete explanation of what's needed there. Unlike in other sites, you can't click directly from there to get additional assistance, but a vertical pane to the right contains commonly-asked questions and answers about the current topic.

If that's not thorough enough for you, you can enter a search term in the box provided, which opens the Help Center. This window consists of a list of related help topics. There are often dozens of them, and they're not necessarily prioritized for general interest users?some are state-specific, and there's a lot of duplication. And many are answered in a sentence or two. You may have to do excessive clicking and reading to get your answer. Every other site offers more in-depth, easily-accessible, context-sensitive help.

When you click the "Go" button under "Need program help?" you're directed to a window that connects you to either a live chat session or a live phone call with an H&R Block support agent. This is for technical site support only. If you have a tax-related question, you only get one shot at a live chat, email and phone call, and then fees apply for each. This is in sharp contrast to TurboTax, which offers unlimited contact for free, and TaxACT, which charges $7.95 for unrestricted access. There's also online help and a community of users and experts asking and answering questions.

An Unusual Extra
H&R Block is making its huge stable of tax professionals available year-round now for ongoing support. It's giving customers their own private portal, where they can upload documentation for the current year's taxes. This is a great idea, and will be very helpful when prep time rolls around. The company will also provide tax law updates and advice from the pros on these individual sites.

H&R Block's online tax preparation sites have always been rated highly in our reviews. The variety of ways that you can interact with the company's experts is greater than what's offered by any competitor. But its online help tools pale in comparison to its competitors', and individualized tax help is prohibitively expensive.

If you've been using H&R Block At Home Deluxe or one of its sister sites (Free, Basic, and Premium) and you like it, there's no reason not to keep using it. It's an excellent site, backed up by the best-known name in tax preparation. But for the same price, you can get equally competent 1040 coverage with better onsite help and free remote access to tax experts through TurboTax Deluxe Online, our tax-prep Editors' Choice?the site I'll recommend this year to anyone who asks.

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