dvp@sequent.com (Dan Vander Ploeg) (03/28/91)
While the ads for dataTAX (nee' TaxBreak) claim that it provides electronic
filing, the reality is that you send the online copy to Datamax corp., they
send it to a clearing house, and the clearing house sends it to the Fed. In
addition, you have to send a hard copy of some form and $15 to dataMAX, and,
of course, you better have a modem and comm. software.
Mere private individuals are apparently not allowed to deal directly with
the IRS computers.
As for the dataTAX program itself, it seems basicly sound, BUT:
1. There are numerous typos in the "help" screens they made from the IRS manual
you get with your 1040.
2. I noticed two lines interchanged on one of the forms,
3. The manual is skimpy and poorly written.
4. Switching between forms is very slow without a hard drive. While they claim
that you can speed things up by loading the forms into RAM, I ran out of
memory; my regular startup sequence leaves me with only 3/4 meg of free memory,
and it wasn't enough.
5. The IRS requires a graphic image of the form 1040, but on my 9-pin the
output is barely legible. There is also no provision for printing to a file,
much less Postscript output, so you can't use your office laser printer.
WARNING If you decide to go out and buy a copy for this years returns, make
sure the box has an underline by "Final Edition" since there isn't much time
left for trading in a preliminary edition.
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Dan Vander Ploeg -------