Show Me A Real Live Cpa

In the long run, face-to-face tax help beats spiffy Web sites by a mile

Provide news feedback or report an error

Confidential tip?

Send a tip to our reporters

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

By Timothy J. Mullaney

February 7, 2000 at 5:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Take it from me: There's a lot you can learn from being fired. Me, I learned about taxes. I'd always done my own, but being bounced from a job in 1997 meant working as a freelance business writer until early 1999--and actually running a business as opposed to doling out critiques. For the first time, I turned to tax-preparation software and an accountant. Now I can use the Internet for tax help. But is the Web right for the job?

To find out, I went to three leading tax Web sites: Quicken.com, Yahoo! Finance Tax Center, and Kiplinger.com. Kiplinger and Quicken are linked to two top tax-software packages, Kiplinger TaxCut and Intuit Inc.'s TurboTax. All three help you get organized before doing your taxes and tell you something about how to handle investments to minimize the bite. Any of them lets you file online (at Quicken, you follow a link to sibling site TurboTax.com), with an ease of use comparable to tax-prep software. And all feature bulletin boards where you can ask for help.