Jackson Hewitt is best known for in-person tax preparation, and still has 6,300 brick-and-mortar locations in the US. The company entered the online tax preparation software market several years ago, and it the standard wizard that takes you through the tax process and automatically builds a return with all the required documents. Unfortunately, the company's in-person expertise just doesn't translate well enough to justify its high price. Confusing navigation tools and substandard help remain our biggest complaints, and you can't import data from competitors or even from past Jackson Hewitt filings, this year. Instead, we recommend using Editors' Choice pick, TurboTax Deluxe, which offers excellent help support and intuitive overall design. Pricey Versions Jackson Hewitt offers three options for the 2017 tax year (which is the one you need to e-file by April 17, 2018). Jackson Hewitt Free Edition supports W-2 income and the Earned Income Credit (without children), unemployment, and the standard deduction only. The Deluxe version (reviewed here) costs $69.95 federal and $36.95 per state and lets you claim dependents and the child tax credit, student loans, and retirement income. The top-of-the-line edition costs $109.95 federal and $36.95 per state, and it is designed to meet the needs of self-employed individuals who need to file the full Schedule C. It also supports itemized deductions and other income, credits, and deductions, as well as rental property. You can start your return on the Jackson Hewitt website with any one of these three options, but keep in mind that the site doesn't warn you if you enter data in an area that requires a more expensive version. TurboTax Deluxe makes it clear if this is the case. You could conceivably get all the way to filing time and realize you owe more than you thought. The worst of it is that, every level, Jackson Hewitt offers fewer features for more money than any other competitor. Similar Attributes Personal tax preparation websites function similarly, though they vary greatly in terms of support and user experience. For the most part, they're much easier to use than the old method (pencil, paper, and calculator) that forces you to switch back and forth between the 1040 and its related forms, schedules, and instructions. Tax sites remove this burden from the process. In general, they're proactive and conversational. A comprehensive wizard asks you questions and provides easy ways for you to supply answers. If you aren't sure what a particular query or statement means, you can ideally consult a variety of built-in help resources. Most provide a way for you to chat with or make a phone call to one of the company's dedicated tax professionals. You never have to see an official IRS form or instruction (though that's sometimes an option), and the guidance is usually written in easy-to-understand layman's terms. As you respond to the site's questions, the software prepares your actual return in the background. These websites—even the totally free Credit Karma Tax—do all required calculations and drop your answers onto the correct lines of the correct IRS documents. When you think you have entered every detail that pertains to your tax-related financial life, they go back to the beginning and quickly review everything, alerting you to problems or omissions. If you need to file a state return, the service transfers over pertinent data and helps you prepare that, too. Early Steps Jackson Hewitt Deluxe lacks the Life Events feature found in TaxAct Plus and TaxSlayer Classic. On these other sites, this feature asks you about any significant life changes you might have experienced during the previous year (such as a home sale, marriage, or birth) and provides helpful information about how these might affect your tax return. While this is not an absolute necessity, it's a useful feature that helps you understand the process and typically acts as a sort of a roadmap for the rest of the service. To get started with Jackson Hewitt, you create an account by entering a unique username and password, selecting and answering security questions and then verifying your identity by text or email. The site then asks you a series of questions about topics such as your filing status and Social Security number on individual screens, even though all of these could easily fit on a single page. When it got to my mailing address, it pulled in a real address that belonged to a relative but which had never been entered on this or any other tax website. The company said this was a browser issue and recommended I clear my cache, historical data, and cookies. I've never had this experience with any other tax service. Previously, Jackson Hewitt let you import data from competitors' sites, but the company has discontinued that practice. FreeTax USA and others let you import PDFs from other sites. You also used to be able to enter your Jackson Hewitt username and password from the previous year and have the site populate many fields with historical information. This year, everyone using the service must create a new username and password, so even former users will have to start from scratch. That's disappointing. Getting Around Once you log in and answer the initial questions, the site asks about W-2s and other sources of income. There are two ways to move through this section—and other areas of the site. If you are an experienced tax filer or have a simple return, you can select the topics you want to visit. In the Income section, this includes items like W-2s and interest income. You select one from the main list, go through its questions, and return to the list for more. If you have a complex return, are fairly new to tax preparation, or just want to make sure you don't miss anything, you can use the sequential interview option. This wizard-driven option takes you all the way through the 1040 and supporting documents, asking questions about every topic covered by the service. As you would when using any other wizard (or any other tax website), you move around by clicking navigation buttons. Sometimes, an affirmative response to a Yes-or-No question advances you to the next screen. If not, you can use the Next and Back buttons to move ahead or to return to the previous screen. To respond to questions, you might click a button or select from a list or enter data in blank fields. Jackson Hewitt's navigation is inconsistent. I got stuck in a loops several times in my testing. For example, after I completed some sections, the service kept returning me to screens I had already finished. Also, when you log back into the site after being gone, the site doesn't ask whether you want to return to the last page visited like H&R Block Deluxe does. It just offers File Now buttons for both federal and state returns. If you need to do more work, you have to use the new navigation toolbar on the left of the screen, which does not break each section down into subsections, like H&R Block Deluxe does. You either have to start at the beginning of one of the topic sections or start the interview process again. This could definitely make an already-stressful process worse. There were other irregularities. When I canceled a screen I decided not to complete, it took me back to the home page rather than to the last screen I completed. Another time, I tried to click the Help button after entering some data, but the software told me that I needed to save the data first. Jackson Hewitt is the only site I've tested that requires occasional manual saving. Also, there I found no way to get back to that original screen after I finished with the Help section. Overall, I spent too much time backtracking and was unable to see a comprehensive view of everything I'd done—something that's standard on sites like FreeTax USA. The site's graphics, fonts, layout, and overall design are uninspiring. Jackson Hewitt falls well short of sites such as TurboTax Deluxe and TaxAct Plus. Jackson Hewitt's interface simply isn't very compelling, which is a problem for an expensive application that you require a significant (and stressful) time commitment. TurboTax in particular shows that a clear design makes an appreciable difference to the process. Help Wanted The user experience is important, but so is the quality, accessibility, and depth of a tax site's help resources. Websites that excel at this, like TaxAct and TurboTax, provide instant help for most topics—certainly the most complicated ones. They hyperlink terms and open small windows with clearly written, understandable explanations, or they anticipate issues and make brief Q&As available on the same screen as the questions. Jackson Hewitt falls short here, too; the quality and quantity of help don't justify the site's high price. The only context-sensitive help on the data-gathering pages themselves is an occasional hyperlinked question or statement. For example, when filling out a Form 1098-T, one question asks, "Is the student pursuing a degree?" The hyperlinked phrase reads, "Why are you asking this?" Clicking on the link opens a small window with a very brief explanation. If you use the Help link at the top of the screen, it searches the site's data files for a word or phrase, but results are inconsistent. Occasionally, it sends you to IRS instructions. One of the main reasons to use tax-prep software is to avoid having to read that agency's officialese. You can also send an email to Jackson Hewitt to get help, but it no longer offers the chat or phone help of past versions. Home Improvement Jackson Hewitt has improved its final review process since last year. It lists forms you've completed as well as those that are finished. For example, when I left off some information about a dependent (including Social Security number), clicking on that form took me directly to the screens that needed completion. It even returned me to the main review page afterward. This is similar to how some competitors handle this feature. But other sites would not have let me advance past a page requiring a Social Security number. Other times, it prevented me from advancing until I entered the address of a school, for example. Going Backward Jackson Hewitt is a big name in the world of tax preparation, but its DIY online service doesn't provide enough value for its relatively high price. The user experience needs improvement and navigating the site is problematic. The built-in help tools don't even measure up that of less expensive products. Furthermore, the site has dropped the ability to import data from other competitors or even past Jackson Hewitt returns, and it has ceased phone and chat support since last year, too. It's hard to recommend Jackson Hewitt when sites like our Editors' Choice, TurboTax Deluxe, offer higher quality and better value. Jackson Hewitt Deluxe 2018 (Tax Year 2017) Bottom Line: The user experience, navigation tools, and help system you get with Jackson Hewitt Deluxe aren't up to par, especially given its high price. There are better ways to file your taxes online.

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