• Tax deduction programs can help to ease the stress of tax season.TAX TIME image by brelsbil from Fotolia.com
  
  Tax deductions are basically tax breaks, or expenses that the Internal Revenue Service allows to reduce your taxable income. Some examples of deductible items include medical expenses, charitable donations and certain educational expenses. Without the help of a professional accountant, many people miss out on tax deductions that could end up saving them money.
  
  

Turbo Tax Online

• Turbo Tax offers multiple online programs to help keep track of deductible expenses. There is a free program called ItsDeductible that tracks charitable donations and allows you to add donations at any time, assess values of your donated items and easily import donation information to other Turbo Tax programs. These other programs vary in price and level of service. Turbo Tax Online Deluxe is designed to maximize your deductions and is recommended for anyone who owns a home, donates to charity, has childcare expenses or has significant education or medical expenses. Deluxe searches your return for over 350 possible deductions such as mortgage interest, education and medical expenses. Turbo Tax Premier includes all the features of Deluxe but is designed specifically for owners of investments or rental properties. Premier will assist you in finding deductions related to your IRA contributions and investment sales such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds. It also has a 401K maximizer that shows how to increase your contributions without reducing your take-home pay and finds over 20 deductions for rental property owners. Turbo Tax Home & Business helps locate deductible expenses related to running a business such as start-up cost deductions and other tax writeoffs, in addition to managing personal deductions.
  
  

H&R Block At Home

• H&R Block offers DeductionPro, a free online deduction program that provides accurate fair market value for any charitable deductions you may have. It is designed to save you money by recognizing charitable tax deductible items, providing tips to ensure maximum deduction value and allowing you to track donations year-round. A review by Consumer Reports found DeductionPro to be more user friendly than ItsDeductible, but overall found both to be valuable tax tools. H&R Block also offers a Deluxe version designed for homeowners and investors to maximize mortgage interest and charitable deductions. Deluxe also checks for deductible items related to the sale of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. H&R Block Premium & Business is designed for the self-employed or business owners who are looking for software that spots deductions for business-related expenses as well as personal deductions.
  
  

Complete Tax

• Complete Tax has similar tax preparation and deduction programs and claims to be the first choice of CPAs and tax professionals. Their Basic program is designed for people with simple tax returns and it finds deductions related to charitable donations and expenses for children or other dependants. Basic also spots deductions for mortgage interest credits and educational expenses. Complete Tax Deluxe is targeted toward investors to locate deductions for gains and losses on retirement funds, stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Complete Tax Premium is for the self-employed or business owners and real estate investors. This program tracks all business-related deductions as well as personal deductions.