...AND CHEAPER...:

H&R Block is out to wrest back market share from its online tax-prep rivals with such aggressive measures as free services and interest-free advances on refunds--oh, and plunking a supercomputing Jeopardy star down on the desks of its 70,000 tax preparers.

For this tax season, H&R Block has put an additional computer screen on each preparer's desk, facing the customer, and hired IBM's famous Watson computer to control what's on it. Watson's goal is to solve a problem that plagues all tax preparers, both in person and online: human error.

The calculations done by tax-prep software are flawless, but its users make mistakes--forgetting to mention a source of income, say, or misunderstanding what the Internal Revenue Service is asking. What's a capital loss carryover, anyway? Does a political donation count as a charitable contribution? Mess up the answer, and the IRS may notice. In 2015, it sent taxpayers 1.7 million notices about mathematical and clerical errors on returns.

A skilled tax preparer, or well-designed software, can minimize these errors by asking taxpayers the right questions and explaining the process.

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