TurboTax Returns Won’t Print? Blame Microsoft

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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Welcome to Tax Weekend 2012, TurboTax users. Just in time for this momentous weekend just prior to the income tax filing deadline, Microsoft has managed to release a patch to .Net Framework that prevents Intuit’s TurboTax from printing your tax return. There’s nothing like adding insult to injury. :D

You may briefly see a Generating Document message but the paperwork never prints." Intuit says it's working on a fix, and it expects to release a "corrective update" today.
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Just now figuring this out? Two days before all taxes are due. Nice.
 
As a programmer I've seen some pretty bug prone, badly written printer code. One example was a professional reporting system used by many applications about 5 years ago (think Crystal Reports but by another company).

While working on a printer selection related feature I found out they where requesting one print instance from Windows to display the Print Setup dialog, then attempting to manually read out the settings from that instance before creating a *second* instance which they'd then try to apply it to. This worked ok as long as you had a basic printer and where only changing the number of copies or the page orientation. But if you had two different printers with two different drivers, or where setting up any advanced features then you'd end up with all kinds of odd behavoir due to the invalid settings it was applying to the second printer instance (settings that are valid for printer A may not be valid for printer B, and even printer A may not work properly if you programmably apply some settings without realizing you need others).

Long story short they had completely ignored how printers are supposed to work in Windows or any other operating system and tried to roll their own solution. And this was used in many companies in house applications.
 
David_CAN said:
Long story short they had completely ignored how printers are supposed to work in Windows or any other operating system and tried to roll their own solution.
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This sounds more like the root cause of the TurboTax issue.
 
To those talking about printing to pdf. The pdf printer is still a printer and likely the same problem would occur.
 
Maybe they should make a better product instead of just you know, collecting money.
 
jadams said:
To those talking about printing to pdf. The pdf printer is still a printer and likely the same problem would occur.
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No it wouldn't. MS didn't break printing with their update. Only one specific piece of software.
 
I don't believe this is Microsoft's problem. I tried to use TurboTax once, and got stuck on Schedule D because it couldn't figure if SPY, the biggest ETF by assets in the world at the time, was a stock or a mutual fund. The software just took a dump and refused to continue.

I haven't and will never touch TurboTax since. POS software. Intuit makes EA look like Valve.
 
don't use Turbo Tax?

Tax Act has worked flawlessly for me every year, but I don't know if this issue effects it as well.......I realize it's less about the software chosen and more about the underlying OS...but hey, that's what you get for waiting for the last minute:D
 
Thuleman said:
Who prints tax returns anymore anyway, seriously.
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Some of us have to deal with stupid ass states that won't let you file electronically. I had TWO states that required me to mail in my taxes. The first state required it because I was only a part-year resident, the second state required it because they required me to mail them a copy of my other state tax return for verification of taxes paid to the other state.

At least California allowed non-residents and part-year residents to eFile.
 
bacon said:
No it wouldn't. MS didn't break printing with their update. Only one specific piece of software.
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I believe it would still. Even when print to pdf, you're still printing. PDF printer is just an emulated printer. I've seen the same printing problems occur with applications occur when using a real printer or the emulated pdf/xps printer.

though we cant be sure without someone here using turbotax and telling us.
 
jadams said:
I believe it would still. Even when print to pdf, you're still printing. PDF printer is just an emulated printer. I've seen the same printing problems occur with applications occur when using a real printer or the emulated pdf/xps printer.

though we cant be sure without someone here using turbotax and telling us.
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Though from a google search it appears you can SAVE as a pdf. However thats not what everyones talking about. I imagine SAVING as a pdf would work fine.
 
Thuleman said:
Who prints tax returns anymore anyway, seriously.
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It would have cost me $20 to efile in my state so I printed mine out and sent it in. Spending ~$1 on stamps, paper and ink > $20 on efile, especially since I owed my state money. I efiled my federal return as that was free.
 
Thank You HardOCP for posting this. You really saved my butt.
My GF went to print out her state return today since she owed a few dollars and it failed. Since it was my computer, I was obviously at fault.:rolleyes:
Since I had read this alert, I queued up TurboTax and ran the updater, got the patch, and had it printed in 2 minutes.

Thanks go out to Al, aka MajorDomo for keeping me out of the doghouse tonight.
 
belfert said:
I'm not about to pay $19.95 to efile my state taxes. Two stamps and an envelope are way cheaper.
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Exactly, that's what I do. I don't exactly need my 199.99 right away from state. Bastards should have rounded a penny. :D
 
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