2018 Lacerte Tax Software -- New In-Depth Video Review

As a seasoned tax preparer, I noticed over the years that honest, detailed, and in-depth reviews of income tax preparation software were few and far between. I also noted the large number of tax software comparison threads posted on this forum. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to share my new detailed video review of the 2018 Lacerte tax software:

Part 1 -- Overview of the Layout and Advantages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_-iqjK5wKw

Part 2 -- Disadvantages and Overall Assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K_iD_VPN6Q

I hope that this review is helpful in highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses pertaining to Lacerte and welcome your thoughts.

Good Job! Did you get any feedback from Intuit?

Thank you for your feedback! After uploading the videos, I emailed several of the C-suite executives at Intuit. One of them responded shortly thereafter with this:

Thank you for reaching out to me with these links to your product reviews. I especially appreciated Part 2 with your careful and thorough assessment of where we could be doing better. “Everybody likes to party like it’s 1999, but this software looks exactly like it did in 1994” is a great line!

I’ve copied our product leaders for Lacerte here so that they’re aware of your feedback and reviews.

Thank you for being a customer of Lacerte, and thank you for your loyalty to Intuit.

I'm glad to see that Intuit, despite being such a behemoth, still appears to be listening to its users. So at this point, with Christmas coming up, I'm hoping that those web-based tax organizers are in the works.

Generally speaking, new functionality in an existing software is a big resource hog so most companies evaluate the cost/benefit analysis with a fine tooth comb! From my experience, user input to add new functionality are put on a "nice to have" list and most of them die a slow death! The ones that make it to implementation are "strategic" from the company's perspective to make sure they don't lose market share.

As you can imagine tax software programmers are primarily engaged in updating the software to new tax laws and getting rid of bugs in the existing software. A new functionality just compounds the problem.

Remember TaxWorks! A good software that disappeared after a major revamp.