TurboTax online
I tried Turbotax online this year to do my taxes!
I didn’t have to go to the store to buy it, it told me which edition of TurboTax I needed (it’s web-based so it changes to the one you need), didn’t have to pay until the point of filing, and could have done it in Linux.
I finished my taxes and thought it was a winner. Then it failed!
Since Kris and I are looking for a house I redid them as if we bought one to see what our return would be, then on the screen that shows “Your refund of “x” has been accepted” the values changed to reflect the changes I had just done! That wasn’t what I filed! How could it possibly be accepted? This is /horrible/ database design, or the application layer is pulling the values from the wrong table. Why are they even using the same tables to store the filed data as they are the preparation data? I /really/ hope they’re not doing this or there will be a mess with my refund.
Then to make matters worse I tried to undo my changes, and couldn’t! I don’t want to have to retype everything. I had exported the TurboTax file after filing so I figured I should just be able to import it right? Wrong. There’s no way to import. There /should/ be a way to save versions. I have NO WAY of opening my 2008 return without buying the Desktop version of Turbotax.
How hard can it be to support versioning and have separate Preparation and Filing tables? Why not design the tables like this?
Tax.Prevaration.Versions
| ID | CustomerID | VersionNo | VersionName |
| 23452 | 533291 | 1 | Final |
| 23460 | 533291 | 2 | Buying a cheap house |
| 23472 | 533291 | 3 | Buying an expensive house |
Tax.Preparation
| ID | CustomerID | VersionNo | Line | ReturnEntity | Return Value |
| 456325 | 533291 | 1 | 1 | Federal | $5 |
| 456376 | 533291 | 1 | 2 | California | $2 |
| 456464 | 533291 | 2 | 1 | Federal | $7 |
| 456468 | 533291 | 2 | 2 | California | $3 |
| 456943 | 533291 | 3 | 1 | Federal | $9 |
| 456950 | 533291 | 3 | 2 | California | $4 |
And upon tax compiling the row gets copied to a Tax.Filing table.
Tax.Filing
| ID | CustomerID | VersionNo | Line | ReturnEntity | Return Value |
| 23425 | 533291 | 1 | 1 | Federal | $5 |
| 32456 | 533291 | 1 | 2 | California | $2 |
Next year I’ll go back to the TurboTax Desktop edition (which includes OSX binaries BTW).
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