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. -- // UUCP: ...!{tektronix|ogicse}!sequent!dvp _______ =====// =========================================================| # | \\ // Internet: dvp@sequent.com | | ==\ /============================================================| | Dan Vander Ploeg -------