Well, I just did my taxes, and I'm happy to say that I'm getting back a great wodge of cash. Much more than my unemployment ``benefits''. Anyway, I thought I'd recommend, for those of you that file US Federal Income Tax returns, a program called TaxACT. It's totally free for generating your federal returns, and they'll do electronic filing of those returns for $8. I've used them and their electronic filing for the last three years and have been very satisfied with their service. They also have state returns generation and electronic filing, but they are $13 and $5 more, respectively. I've never had great cause to bother for the state, but I imagine that it's as quality as the rest of their program. Just so you know, my mother usually buys TurboTax every year, and I get to do her taxes as well (which are actually much more complicated than mine). I've done her taxes with both programs for the last three years, and I've found no significant fiscal differences for two of those years. For one year, TaxACT made probably a 10% difference to her favor. The only ``advantage'' I've ever seen TurboTax have is those annoying videos of tax professionals who don't tell you anything more than the written instructions. So I wholeheartedly recommend TaxACT. Let's put those Quicken doofuses out of business.

Oh -- the one drawback is that it's Windows or Web-based only. I hesitate to do my taxes on a web service, so I'm forced to do it under Windows. Last year, I did it on my iBook under VirtualPC, though. (And sorry to all of you non US-ians for the spam.)