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Oops! Errors Found In Tax Software

Associated Press

Intuit Inc. is warning customers of errors in its popular tax-preparation software that could lead to miscalculations on returns for a second year.

The company said Wednesday that fewer than 1 percent of users of TurboTax and MacInTax should be affected by the bugs, which have led to wrong entries in some cases involving depreciation of cars and real estate, self-employed taxpayers and IRA contributions.

But Intuit is offering users help in working around the flaws - or even free, new corrected versions of the programs, said David Goines, vice president and general manager of Intuit’s personal tax division.

The flaws - seven in all - showed up over the past two months during testing that continued after shipment of the software, he said.

The bugs appeared a year after different flaws were found in the same programs. But the new glitches are less Intuit serious than last year’s, said a publisher of a software industry newsletter. He also said bugs are inevitable, particularly given the circumstances.

“They’re in a difficult situation. Many other companies can let product deadlines slide, but Intuit is lashed to the filing deadline,” said Bruce Brown, publisher of the BugNet newsletter in Sumas, Wash.

Intuit, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is a leading maker of money-management software for personal computers. Its TurboTax, for IBMtype personal computers, and MacInTax for Macintosh machines, are the best-selling tax-preparation programs.

The company discovered the first error on Jan. 11 and the most recent one on Feb. 2, Goines said. After confirming the errors and developing “workarounds” - a process taking five to 10 days - Intuit notified customers on its World Wide Web site and included the information on the telephone lines users can call for help.

The company also guarantees that it will pay any penalty and interest if they result from an error in its software or late tax-law change that wasn’t figured into the program.

Intuit estimates that just under 2 million people will have the programs by the end of the tax season but that fewer than 20,000 will be affected by any of the flaws.

Last year, an error in MacInTax caused it to drop every 30th entry when information was transferred from Quicken, Intuit’s popular personal finance software. MacInTax and TurboTax also produced miscalculations in some circumstances where a user was reporting disability income or taking a certain kind of car deduction.

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