The Plot continues to thicken.

Note that previous posts were about a year ago, but TurboTax (Intuit) continues their sleaze-ball attitude.

An article in my local newspaper, by Wall Street Journal writer Walter S. Mossberg reports the latest "tricks" by Intuit.

If you install TurboTax for tax year 2002, you must register via internet connection, which "locks" your installation of TurboTax to your individual machine. You cannot print or file your return from any other machine. Note that this can ONLY be done by installing monitoring software ON YOUR MACHINE, and Intuit does not tell you they're doing that.

TurboTax SECRETELY installs a "spyware" program on your machine that "monitors" to make sure you don't use their program "improperly" (- and what else it monitors is a mystery). The spyware program is NOT UNINSTALLED when you uninstall TurboTax – unless you know that it is there (Intuit doesn't tell you about it) and go to their web site and search out the Uninstall program to remove it (which they provided only AFTER user complaints).

Posts from a year ago above give some indication of what I found after attempting to use last year's TurboTax. I do not believe that they are not deliberately and fraudulently attempting to plant spyware on users machines to gather information NOT related to annual tax filing – but that's just my personal opinion.

Not previously reported: TurboTax last year trashed my prior year records, making it impossible for the replacement TaxCut to recover accurate information. The result was that the IRS notified me of errors in the return that I ultimately filed, and I was "fined" for errors CREATED BY TURBO TAX MANIPULATION of my prior year information without my consent or knowledge. (Comparison to my printed returns confirms that TurboTax for 2001 CHANGED information in my old files for years 2000 AND 1999.)

The only widely marketed alternative is H&R Block's TaxCut. I have it up for this year, as we had to prep 1099s some time ago. It is not a "thing of beauty," but at least – so far as I can tell – doesn't screw with my machine, and I expect it to do the job needed for my tax return preps.

TaxCut for this year – at least in the version I have – does note that Win95/98 users MUST use a specific version of Internet Explorer to e-file, and they don't provide the required version. I find that much preferable to SLAMMING an unwanted version without user's knowledge or consent, as Intuit did last year. They have been responsive, with FREE replies to a couple of email questions, and they did promptly implement a "fix" at their website in response to my complaint (Although they were a little less than forthcoming about admitting that the error was on their site – they fixed it quickly.)

John