It's January, which means you're probably thinking about your finances for the upcoming year. Tax season is right around the corner. There might be employment changes coming or large purchases on your mind. Here are five apps to help you keep track of your money as it goes in and out of your wallet. iBank is an all-purpose financial organizer for the iPhone that keeps track of your checking, savings, credit card and cash accounts. It lets you enter purchases on the fly and has some nice features like split transactions and multi-currency support. It can be used as a stand alone app or as a companion app that syncs to iBank for the Mac. iBank lets you sync multiple devices so you and other members of your household can always have up-to-date financial information on your handset. TaxCaster is a tax calculator for the iPhone and the iPad from Intuit. Read More

You may have noticed people are losing sleep and grumbling while they are attempting to get ready for tax time.  Filing online has become common place but what about filing from a mobile phone? Many of the IRS and tax websites use Flash and are too large for a small phone screen. iPhone owners who want to file will have it easier, but only in California. SnapTax is an IPhone app that allows CA residents with simple returns to e- file a federal and state return right from their iPhone in minutes. Instead of entering W-2 forms by hand, users can take of photo of the forms. SnapTax uses optical character recognition (OCR) software to allow you to prepare and e-file federal and state returns entirely from your iPhone. It's simple.  In fact, you can file your taxes in just three easy steps:  Snap a photo of your 2009 W-2 with Read More

Tax season is upon us, and the iPhone is here to take the sting out of Uncle Sam’s April chore. The current arsenal of App Store software is useful for both simple and complex tax processes, and is generally cheaper than desktop equivalents. While there are a variety of tax-related apps by independent developers, the major players in the App Store market are also the star gladiators vying for dominance in the e-commerce market: Intuit (TurboTax) and H&R Block. Below is a run down of the three most sophisticated tax apps we found for the iPhone. For many filers, a simple W-2 won’t suffice. H&R Block offers free, human guidance for even the most complicated questions via its iPhone app, Tax Answers. To give it a test run, I asked a question about educational exemptions for Social Security taxes (something I’d been trying to figure out for a long time) and Read More

By Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Feb 3, 2010 | Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch, and soon… iPad!) related, they’re fair game. Confession: in all the iPad hubbub last week, Rene didn’t get around to posting everyone’s pick. Bright side, you get almost twice as many this week! So who’s on deck this double-dose and what are our picks? Find out after the break! Apple’s new MobileMe Gallery app is awesome. I really like the way it previews photos at the top (just like Apple TV) and you can easily share photos, albums or movies. Adding friend’s galleries are bonus too! I just wish you could comment Read More

It ‘s that time of year again “ when lots of us are either looking forward to or dreading the prospect of dealing with tax returns.  Turbo Tax “ from what my mother-in-law and others tell me “ is an enormous help in getting this task dealt with as quickly and easily as possible each year. And now there ‘s an iPhone app to help with this as well, from the same folks (Intuit) who make Turbo Tax.  The app is called Taxcaster Mobile and it looks pretty darn good “ at least from what I can gather from the screencaps and app description.  As their App Store page proclaims, it is a ‘cool tool from a name you can trust ‘.  And at a cost of zero, which is awfully nice. Even though I am lucky enough to have a very kind MIL who does tax returns for my wife Read More