At the risk of making any accountant who is reading this unhappy, I'd like to say a few words this month about my experience to date with income tax software. It's wonderful!

After years of having my business and personal taxes done for me, my "preparer" managed to file the wrong corporate form causing me grief that is yet put to rest. So in a fit of "this can't be that tough" thinking, I purchased tax preparation software.

I bought Personal Tax Edge and State Tax Edge from Parson's Technology (owned by Quicken) to do my personal and sole proprietorship returns. I bought Turbo Tax for Business for my corporate returns.

I have had the opportunity to use both, but I have not completed the business returns and the personal returns are not quite done. The software packages have the necessary forms to file for extensions, which I have done.

Both packages have impressed me. They are easy to use and seem very comphrhensive. Data entry is easy and the Help screens are good. The programs do an "audit" when you think you are finished and tell you where you are missing information. In the case of the Parson's package, the state forms are filled in automatically when the Federal information is entered. Then you just have to finish the State-specific entries. Very nice!

But the final results will only be as good as my input, so I plan to have a CPA review my returns to see if I have missed anything. This should be less expensive than having the returns prepared from scratch. Since I'm using previous years returns as guides, I feel that the initial results should be pretty close.

If you have a small business and a PC, consider doing your own tax returns. Today's software makes it pretty easy.