Comments on: H&R Block At Home Review

By: Joe Reynolds

Joe Reynolds — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:29:16 +0000

I’ve been a user since TaxCut first came out. Up until now I thought it was a fine product, with increasing functionality and ease of use. But I recently discovered that if you have your tax return data password-protected (highly recommended — you never know when you’re going to get hacked, virus’ed, lose your laptop or whatever), that the password is there in your data file in CLEAR TEXT. All someone needs to do to open your TaxCut/AtHome return is to browse your data file with NotePad or similar simple browser program and search for “psswd=”. Voila. There’s your password just a clear as you’d like. Now they can open your return. (FYI: your data file can be found by doing a file search in Windows and search for the name of your return followed by “.Txx”, where xx=09 for 2009 for instance). I reported this problem to them on April 10 via their chat system. It seemed like news to them, but I find it hard to believe they didn’t know this, that they never actually looked at their own data file format. So, I say steer away from this product. What else didn’t they test, or didn’t care about security-wise? This is incredibly unprofessional. Shame on their programmers.

By: Beth

Beth — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:07:00 +0000

So, Turbo Tax lets you continue if you’ve made a mistake? Sounds like a very bad system to me.

By: Debra

Debra — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:33:22 +0000

We used H&R Block in years previously, but I had a disasterous experience with them, and I will be going back to Turbo Tax. In fact, I feel like I didn’t really have a CHOICE this year, because H&R Block’s software wouldn’t let me go any further unless I entered information differently than it had been entered on a tax form I got from Fidelity. Even though a flag popped up on Turbo Tax, suggesting I may have entered the information wrong, it let me continue on with my taxes where I simply couldn’t with H&R Block.