Way back in 1955, H&R Block got its start as a real-world tax preparation service. This highly experienced company offers more personal tax preparation options than any of its competitors, including in-office services, DIY software, and online applications, in addition to a hybrid of DIY and professional prep called Tax Pro Review. We tested H&R Block Deluxe, which looks and works much like the other personal tax software in H&R Block's lineup. The Deluxe edition focuses on W-2 and interest/dividend income, and helps you find the deductions you can claim. H&R Block Deluxe offers a capable blend of tax topic coverage, usability, and taxpayer guidance, but it doesn't quite match the cohesive, always-supportive experience offered by TurboTax Deluxe, our Editors' Choice. Like an Office Visit If you've ever sat in a tax preparer's office, you've probably noticed they know what questions to ask—and in what order. Online personal tax preparation websites like H&R Block Deluxe work similarly, minus the human interaction. You don't see graphical representations of tax forms as you work. Rather, these sites use wizard-like tools to display their questions. When you supply an answer, they work in the background to do the required calculations and fill in the official IRS forms and schedules. As you advance through the wizard, you can track your progress through both occasional summaries of your work so far and real-time dollar figures representing what you owe or are owed at that point in the process. Help is available in a variety of ways. If you don't understand a particular query, you can click links for more detailed explanations. The best services never expose you to the sometimes-complex language the IRS uses in its instructions. Instead, their tax experts rewrite the official texts with the average taxpayer in mind. View All 6 Photos in Gallery After you exhaust all the topics that apply to your financial situation, these websites do three things. They review your return and show you any problems they found, which you can correct. They transfer applicable data to any state returns you must file. They also walk you through the process of actually e-filing or printing your return. You can do everything up to this final step without paying the fees required. Speaking of fees, there are four sites in H&R Block's main lineup: Free (both federal and state, supports 1040 EZ and 1040A and Schedule A); Deluxe ($54.99 federal and $36.99 per state); Premium, ($74.99 federal and $36.99 per state, adds Schedule C-EZ, D, and E), and Self-Employed ($94.99 federal and $36.99 per state, adds Schedule C and additional guidance for self-employed). You can add Tax Pro Review to any version for prices ranging from $49.99-$89.99 (at this writing), which assigns you to a tax professional who will do a thorough review of your return. These prices are in line with the tax-preparation competition; if money is too tight to swing these fees, one option you have is Credit Karma Tax, which does offer completely free federal and state filing. Note, however, that you sacrifice quite a bit when it comes to hand-holding, which most of us end up needing at some point during the process. Early Info Once you create an account for the H&R Block service by entering a username and password, it asks you to provide personal information such as names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers. You specify a filing status and enter details about any dependents. For these early questions, the site asks one question on each screen, so there's a lot of clicking. If you prepared your 2016 taxes using an H&R Block product or one offered by a competitor, you can import key data from it, which speeds up the process and reduces the potential for error, assuming you didn't make any mistakes last year. During setup, H&R Block doesn't ask you about any significant life changes you may have experienced during the previous year (marriage, home purchase, investment sales, and so on) or provides information about how this may affect your taxes. It only asks these questions to determine which version you should use. But H&R Block certainly covers all these situations throughout the course of its interview. Income First By now you know that you advance from screen to screen by clicking the Back and Next buttons. You do this throughout the site, though there are other navigation options, too. You can, for example, click a tab in the horizontal toolbar at the top (Overview, Federal, and so on), and you see the subsections that comprise it (like Income, Adjustments and Deductions, and Credits). You can use these buttons to move into another section of the question-and-answer screens (once you've visited it), but it makes more sense to move through this interview in the order it's presented. Links in the left vertical pane show you your real-time, ever-updating tax obligation or refund and other housekeeping pages. In the Income section, the H&R Block first asks whether you have received any of a handful of common income types. If you indicate that you received a W-2, for example, you can either enter the required information manually or take a photo of your W-2. If you do the latter, H&R Block will pull data from it and fill in the correct fields on the site. Every other possible type of taxable income is then displayed on one screen. To visit a specific topic, you click on the Add button to the right, which opens the list of subtopics covered there. So, for example, when you select Employment, 1099-G and Freelance/Contract Income, the list contains entries that cover content areas like the 1099-MISC, unemployment income, and state/local tax refunds. If you choose a subject area that isn't covered by your current version, a message will appear with upgrade instructions. Each subtopic has a Learn More button below it; clicking on this opens a small window with an explanation of the content needed. Click the Visit Topic button, and a mini-wizard walks you through the Q&A for that tax item. You provide the information requested by clicking buttons to indicate the correct answer, entering information in fields, and selecting from lists of options. When you finish, H&R Block Deluxe opens a screen that recaps your activity up to that point. It displays a list of every topic you've visited and lets you revisit or delete any of them. At the bottom of the page, you can click the Yes button to indicate that you must return to the income home page to visit more topics, or the No, I'm Done button to see a summary of your responses and move on to adjustments and deductions. The entire site functions in this way. H&R Block Deluxe makes it clear on each page what action you need to take and where you need to go next. But it seems to require an excess of clicking as you move back and forth between the section home pages and the mini-wizards that actually solicit your answers. TurboTax Deluxe offers a smoother, more linear experience. Handy Help The Q&A format that online tax preparation solutions offer works well if there's always an option to have complex or unfamiliar concepts explained in more detail—without having to open a giant help database and search for a term (though there's a place for that). It's critical for tax software to make context-sensitive help easily accessible. H&R Block Deluxe does a good job here. Take the home mortgage section. It explains on the first page what it's looking for and displays links to deeper details for topics that may be confusing. For example, click the hyperlinked "What's a Second Home?" phrase, and a small window opens that spells out the answer in clear, understandable language. This kind of help appears throughout the site, and the use of small pop-out windows is effective and unobtrusive. TaxAct Plus and FreeTax USA do a better job with context-sensitive help, though; they anticipate related questions that users might ask and provide answers. At any point, you can also open the Help Center. The window that opens displays links to numerous brief Q&As on the current topic (if available). Below that is a categorized list of the most popular general help topics; click one, and you see a series of related Q&As. You can also enter a word or phrase in the search box, and the site will return dozens or hundreds of brief write-ups, showing the broadest, most sought-after content first. Eventually, you get to very specific hits, like how a state handles the tax topic being explored. You can do complex searches to narrow this down from the start. Finally, the Get Additional Help button in this window takes you to a link for program help and another for connecting to the site's tax help from professionals via chat. Phone help is also available. H&R Block is a little more formal in its language and looks than the friendly—even folksy—TurboTax. It's not unfriendly, however, and it uses language and navigation/data entry conventions that should be familiar to most taxpayers. The two sites simply have different personalities. TurboTax is the human preparer who greets you with a big smile and makes some small talk as he or she goes along. H&R Block is all business, more like Jackson Hewitt Deluxe, though it has added a bit of cheer to its user experience. Cleanup and E-Filing After you complete all of the federal tax steps, H&R Block Deluxe takes care of some housekeeping tasks, like creating estimated tax payment vouchers, and provides a summary of your return. It also suggests forms you may have forgotten and lets you search for (and jump to) additional documents by form name or tax topic. This can be very helpful when you come to the end of your return and still have paper forms or unresolved issues. It works great, but after you enter any missing content, you have to find your way back to the Additional Documents screen to move on. Next up is the site's Accuracy Review, which combs your return for anything that may be inaccurate or missing. If it finds something, it explains the problem to you and provides a Fix Issue button, which is supposed to take you to the offending screen and then back to the Accuracy Review. H&R Block has improved this feature, but it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes it takes you back to the site's earliest screens and tells you where to find the topic that needs attention but doesn't return you to the Accuracy Review. This is a critical element of tax websites, one that TaxAct and TurboTax handle more competently. A Reliable Option Nonstandard navigation features aside, H&R Block is a comprehensive, solid personal tax preparation website. My own particular journey through the 1040 using H&R Block Deluxe went smoothly in testing. If you used it and were satisfied last year, there's no real reason to switch. If you have very simple taxes, you might also consider H&R Block's free More Zero, which, unlike its competitors, supports the Schedule A. For the best user experience, however, one that combines exceptional preparation tools and guidance (and supports roughly the same group of tax topics, but costs a little more), we recommend TurboTax Deluxe. H&R Block Deluxe 2018 (Tax Year 2017) Bottom Line: H&R Block Deluxe is a highly capable and well-designed tax prep service that helps users claim relevant deductions and credits. It can be tricky to navigate, though, and help can be spotty.

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