I do my taxes on my computer every year.

For the past two years, I have used TaxCut. This year, I had several unpleasant surprises:

1. It would crash hard at a particular screen in the program, every time. I finally figured out how to skip that screen. Fortunately, it didn’t pertain to me.

2. It refused to let me file because it didn’t have charitable giving ready to go yet, saying I should run the automatic update procedure. Guess what — I already did, and it installed its latest updates.

3. The state tax program for Kansas is available for Windows, but not yet for Mac. So I can’t even try to file my state taxes.

Fast and easy? I think not.

I originally switched from TurboTax because:

1. It was more expensive than TaxCut and provided no extra features

2. TurboTax would charge $10 more simply for the privilege of getting the same product for Mac

3. TurboTax tried to write to your boot sector as part of its copy-protection scheme, often rendering machines unbootable.

4. TurboTax tried to restrict how many returns one could prepare with it, even though there was no technical reason for that.

5. Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, have been known to intentionally break features of their software such as Quicken simply to force people to upgrade.

So it seems there is no non-crappy choice out there. I could go with TaxCut and get a product that is apparently unintentionally crappy. Or I could go with TurboTax, and give my dollars to a company that intentionally handicaps their software.

Either way, I’m displeased.

Perhaps I should get a slide rule and quill pen and do things the old fashioned way.