TurboTax for the iPad (Tax Year 2011)

When the iPad was introduced, I didn't initially think of it in terms of financial applications. Neither did I think of using smartphones for crunching numbers. But why not? Rather than lugging even the smallest, lightest notebook into meetings, CPAs and controllers and all manner of money people are walking into meetings with their iPads in hand. Personal and business finance have moved to tablet computers. So it's no surprise that the iPad's latest entry in the field of finances is tax preparation software. Just as it's won the Editors Choice for its TurboTax Deluxe Online, Intuit has done the best job overall of building personal tax applications for mobile devices.

Intuit has embraced the iPad in a big way, launching iPad-optimized versions of TurboTax Deluxe, Premier, and Home & Business (unlike H&R Block, TurboTax does not offer a free iPad edition). There are also four Intuit smartphone apps available for the iPhone and Android devices: TurboTax SnapTax, TaxCaster, EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) Finder (in Spanish and English), and MyTaxRefund (see sidebar TK). H&R Block and TaxACT only have one apiece?and you can't snap a picture of your W-2 and have fields automatically filled in for you using them.

If you've already started your return online on your PC, you can transfer that information over to the iPad version and complete it there. But if you want to be truly able to work on your return in multiple sessions from either device, you can load it up in Safari. Intuit has built an iPad-compatible version that works just fine overall, though it lacks some of the online edition's tools and displayed a couple of quirks for us.

Familiar Navigation
I tested both the iPad-optimized version of TurboTax and the compatible one. They look and work like the online version, with some navigational and functional differences. You'll begin your tax preparation in the Deluxe version, but you can easily upgrade to Premier or Home & Business.

The Safari-based version more closely resembles the PC-based online product. Navigational tabs run in the vertical pane on the left instead of across the top (if your iPad is horizontal; you'll have to open the navigational tool if it's vertical). There's no right-side pane displaying Live Community questions and answers on either, nor a big button leading you to the Help Center. Instead, there's a small icon on the top of the screen. Once you launch the help window, though, the two versions are identical.

You still use the Back and Continue buttons to move forward and back one screen (I occasionally had to slide the screen to see these in the browser version). Both offer the option to use a guided walk-through for each section or explore topics on your own. The latter displays a list of topics in each section and lets you begin or update them. Either way, TurboTax presents you with questions and asks that you either enter information or select options from lists, then deposits your answers in the correct place on forms and schedules.

The Tools feature made it into the Safari-based version; clicking on this opens a window that lets you search for topics or see a list of them, and view your fees. The native iPad application lets you search for topics and takes you to a relevant screen. But the Flags feature found in the PC-based versions ? bookmarks that let you write reminders to yourself on specific pages ? isn't in either.

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