Basically, federal income tax is the percentage that the federal government takes from an individual's or business' earnings. The amount of that percentage will be based on the amount one earns. This percentage will be the payment of the citizens of the United States to the various services the federal government provides, like construction of roads, schools and other infrastructures intended for the general good of the public.

Federal income tax covers areas of concerns like import duties as well as the taxes being paid certain commodities and those asked of from employers and employees. Computing for your annual tax returns can be an added confusion from the already convoluted world taxation.

Regardless of how much the concepts are presented and how much detailed the explanations are, most of the laymen will surely get confused on what they are doing when they accomplish their tax preparations. It is therefore quite a bit unfortunate that tax preparations is required by law and one could be imprisoned for not filing a proper one.

To assist taxpayers in preparing their annual dues and forms, a number of software manufacturers have developed tax preparation software that will assist taxpayers. By purchasing the software, one can easily calculate their income tax returns avoiding the hassles of computing manually or hiring expensive professionals to prepare their taxes for them. The various tax software programs available are able to calculate quickly and accurately the taxpayer's annual returns, estimates, extensions as well as amended returns.

Not only can the software prepare straightforward tax returns but they are well capable of providing the needs of those big insurance companies and C-corporations whose tax returns are a lot complicated with various return types like the 1120, 1120-L, 1120-PC, 1120-F and 1120-RIC to accomplish.

Regardless of the manufacturer, what the software does is that it streamlines the calculations. By doing so, the processing is made simpler especially through the aid of computers. Tax software can even perform a full-blown, one-step consolidation.

But for the year 2006, initial reviews indicate that the best federal income tax software so far is the TurboTax by Intuit. The software was reviewed to have a rather easy interface and quite powerful computation tools. Following Turbo Tax in terms of popularity is the H&R Block's TaxCut.

It is said that the TurboTax has an edge over TaxCut on the areas of complicated tax preparations especially when it comes to filing a Schedule C. Moreover, with the Turbo Tax upgrade, users can now complete W-2 and 1099 forms for employees. But these are just two of the wide number of tax software available today.