2018 tax software survey: To get through the rigors of tax season, CPAs depend on their tax preparation software. Here's how they rate the leading professional products.

• Author: Bonner, Paul
• Position: Certified public accountants

While professionals in all walks of life are prone to swap views on the relative merits of their tools of the trade, among CPA tax preparers, tax return preparation software generates often extensive and ardent discussion. Return preparers depend on their software to accurately apply U.S. federal and state tax laws, a highly complex procedural and computational task. So the The Tax Adviser and JofA are pleased once again to facilitate and, hopefully, distill this shop talk, with our annual survey of preparers' ratings, likes, and dislikes of their tax preparation software.

We also asked for a third year about clients' tax-related identity theft and saw, for the second year in a row, a sharp decrease in reported incidence of this problem from the 2016 tax season, when it was reported by nearly 60% of respondents (see the sidebar "Taxpayer ID Theft Further Recedes," p. 518). And, looking ahead, we asked whether respondents had discussed with clients selected new provisions of the tax reform legislation known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), P.L. 115-97, learning which were uppermost in CPAs' client communications during the 2018 tax season (see the sidebar "TCJA Provisions Discussed With Clients," p. 519).

Products covered and profile of respondents

The survey asked about 13 tax software products, and, as in previous years, seven products garnered significant numbers of responses: ATX (6% of respondents), CCH Axcess Tax (4%), and ProSystem fx (16%), all from Wolters Kluwer; Drake (14%), by Drake Software; Lacerte (17%) and ProSeries (13%), both products of Intuit Inc.; and UltraTax CS (19%), by Thomson Reuters. The remaining approximately 11% of respondents were divided among the remaining six products and write-in entries (1.2%), which are summarized in bonus material available on thetaxadviser.com (see the link at the end of "Results and Methodology"). For last year's results, see "2017 Tax Software Survey," tinyurl.com/y6umkdea.

This year, firms of five or fewer practitioners accounted for 74% of users of all products, with 17% in firms of six to 20 practitioners, nearly 6% in firms of 21 to 100, and firms of more than 100 accounting for a little over 3%. The number of sole practitioner respondents was higher than last year by more than six percentage points, which may account for slightly higher shares this year than last of products favored by sole practitioners and small firms (see the table "Favorites by Firm Size"). Among these single-member tax firms, Drake was the predominant major product (nearly 27% of respondents who said they used one of the seven major products), followed by ProSeries (22%), and Lacerte (nearly 16%). Users of UltraTax CS, ProSystem fx, and Lacerte were well-represented among firms of between two and 20 preparers. ProSystem fx was used by a majority of respondents in firms of between 21 and 500 preparers, as was CCH Axcess Tax among the largest firms, those of more than 500 preparers.

Favorites by firm size Number of preparers 1 2 to 5 6 to 20 21 to 100 101 to 500 ATX 11.6% 7.0% 0.3% 0.5% 0.0% CCH Axcess Tax 1.2% 3.4% 5.6% 10.8% 34.1% Drake 26.9% 14.4% 4.2% 1.0% 4.5% Lacerte 15.6% 22.3% 24.4% 13.8% 2.3% ProSeries 22.3% 13.6% 5.2% 1.0% 4.5% ProSystem fx 8.5% 14.6% 28.6% 54.9% 50.0% UltraTax CS 14.0% 24.8% 31.6% 17.9% 4.5% Number of preparers 501 or more ATX 0.0% CCH Axcess Tax 56.3% Drake 0.0% Lacerte 6.3% ProSeries 6.3% ProSystem fx 31.3% UltraTax CS 0.0% Percentage of respondents saying their firms are in that size category who used each software. Some columns do not add up to 100% due to rounding. Types of returns

Individual returns accounted for most of the workload of a majority of users of any of the seven major products; 77% reported that a majority of the returns they prepared in 2018 were for individuals. For the vast majority of respondents (90%) business returns were 50% or less of all returns they prepared. Users of CCH Axcess Tax and ProSystem fx reported preparing the highest percentages of business returns. CCH Axcess Tax was the only product for which a significant percentage of respondents (19%) were in firms that prepared more than 5,000 returns (for clients of all types). ProSystem fx was the next highest, with 5%. Both those products also prevailed among firms preparing between 2,000 and 5,000 clients' returns.

Overall ratings All products ATX CCH Axcess Tax Drake Overall rating 4.4 4.3 4.1 4.6 How easy was the update /installation process? 4.5 4.7 4.2 4.8 How easy was the software to use? 4.3 4.5 3.8 4.5 How well did it handle updates during tax season? 4.5 4.6 4.4 4.8 How well did it handle transfers of data within returns? 4.4 4.3 4.1 4.5 How easy was electronic filing? 4.6 4.7 4.5 4.8 How well did it handle multistate business returns? (*) 4.2 4.2 4.0 4.3 How well did it integrate with your accounting and other software? 3.5 3.2 3.7 3.3 Rate your software's conversion package. (**) 4.0...