ultimatetax.com

Empty Promises - Not all states included (WA state preparers beware)

Response to UT response - Claiming to have all states while simultaneously admitting you do not have at least one state is a dishonest business practice. Your response should've been - so we didn't realize WA has filing requirements because we never looked it up. We see their threshold is much higher than most states, which could explain why we missed it. Our team will work on correcting it. But that was not your response. Your response was another false claim - you cannot claim to have all states if you do not have all states.The issue with the screen - that's a SIMPLE DEVS FIX. (Before you say it's not that easy - I've work in IT as a business systems analyst.) If I have to contact support every time I unplug from my docking station to have someone help tell the program which screen it should be on, that's a huge waste of my time and every other preparer who has to deal with it. When I did call, it took 10-15 minutes, once I got to an agent, which doesn't sound like a long time to you - but that's disrespecting my time. Practice honest business practices and people like me would be willing to actually work with you, rather than leave angry and feeling mislead, disappointed and disrespected. *Original Review*I switched from Drake to UltimateTax for the 2023 filing year. Boy oh boy did I pay for that mistake!! It looked great to start with and they even took time to help "train" me. Prior to season start, I felt good about my decision. I learned. Pros: It's cheapCons: Does NOT include all states. WA state doesn't have a regular state return requirement, but DOES have some requirements based on investment income and has some low income credits. NO WA STATE FILES AVAILABLE IN THIS SOFTWARE. I had to take my clients to the WA state DOR page and walk them through how to file it themselves. How unprofressional did I seem to those very same clients I e-filed their WA state returns via Drake the year prior?? I had to give discounts in my service, so the monetary savings was not nearly what it should've been for this software.Additionally, information doesn't flow from one page to another unless directly linked, so you get the pleasure of duplicating entry in the same exact fields across multiple forms. One small example is the address portion of the schedule C. The software can't be bothered to have the address flow to it?!? We're talking simple stuff here, people. Complex returns - if you have any, make sure you double check the information flowed to the correct forms. Hunt and find the correct forms, add them manually and manually enter the data - cause UT won't do it for you.If you have clients with stocks and crypto - be ready to manually enter all transactions. File attachments are limited to 10mb in total, so you will not be able to e-file the return if you attach a PDF of the thousands of transactions your clients make if they enjoy trading. It also does not import the information, so it's yet another time suckApart from the simple 1040 returns I had (not many, I specialize in small businesses), every return took at least twice as long as years prior. Most of them took even longer.At least I have learned a valuable lesson here. Edit / Add:I forgot to mention that, if you have a laptop with docking station and choose to disconnect from the dock - make sure you open UT on your laptop screen and open at least one client on there as well or the program will continue to open your client list on a phantom screen that you cannot access, so you won't be able to get into it when traveling to client sites.In state returns (I also prep a ton of Oregon returns), not all required documents will load, so make sure you double check and manually fill those out for the Portland Public School and Multnomah County taxes (the info won't flow to them)

Date of experience: Feb 27, 2024