No one enjoys doing their taxes, but Intuit's TurboTax family of products make the process a little less awful, with exceptional user interfaces, deep coverage of tax topics, excellent help systems, and voluminous guidance resources. They're also relatively expensive, but they're worth the price. TurboTax Deluxe (reviewed here) may not support as many IRS forms and schedules as some of the competition, but it's superior in every other area, offering an unparalleled user experience among online tax-prep sofware. It's our top choice for filing your 2015 taxes.

Serving the Most
Though 1040EZ and 1040A filers can prepare and submit both their federal and state returns for free (Intuit's Absolute Zero plan), TurboTax Deluxe, the version we reviewed, currently costs $34.99 for federal taxes and $36.99 per state. These prices are scheduled to increase later in the tax season to $54.99 for federal taxes and $39.99 per state. The early-filer prices are roughly comparable to the full prices for H&R Block Deluxe and Jackson Hewitt Deluxe Edition. So if you're going to file with TurboTax (which we recommend), the price is another reason to do it early—besides peace of mind and getting your return back sooner.

TurboTax's free version should suffice for tens of millions of taxpayers. Among the other tax services we reviewed this year, only TaxACT Plus offers absolutely free federal and state preparation and filing. TurboTax Deluxe, which we're talking about here, is appropriate for another very large percentage of the U.S. population: basically, individuals who don't have to claim farm or rental income, didn't sell property or other investments in 2015, and don't have to account for self-employment or small business income and expenses. The emphasis in TurboTax Deluxe is, rather, on finding as many deductions and credits as possible (mortgage/property tax, medical/dental expenses, charitable contributions, and so on) to offset W-2 wages and some 1099-MISC income.

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In other words, if you're accustomed to completing IRS Forms C, D, E, or F, you'll have to pay more to use TurboTax Premier or Home & Business, or one of Intuit's competitors, H&R Block Deluxe (which lacks some forms and schedules) or TaxSlayer Classic Edition. TurboTax Deluxe deals only with the content in the Form 1040, Schedules A & B, and their supporting forms and schedules.

Intuit moved some of these more advanced features out of TurboTax Deluxe a couple of years ago. This year, TaxACT, which had previously made all commonly used federal forms and schedules available for free, now comes in four versions, and you have to pay for the top-of-the-line edition to get that kind of comprehensive coverage in TaxACT.

The bottom line is that only one of the five sites we tested this year—TaxSlayer Classic Edition—supports the whole alphabet of federal forms. But for the vast majority of filers, TurboTax has you covered.

Moving Through the Process
Tax preparation websites don't necessarily tell you what form or schedule you're working on any more than accounting software makes you look at debits and credits. They tend to follow the path of the IRS 1040, starting with income and moving on to deductions and credits and taxes. But all you have to do is answer the—usually—simply phrased questions on each screen and advance to the next. In the background, the site is placing your responses on the correct lines of the appropriate form or schedule. You don't see that happening. Instead you see only what the official IRS documents look like at the end of your journey.