It doesn't specify that it means how many months in the tax year, so someone unfamiliar with the credit may think it necessary to convert the child's full age into months. When that larger number is entered, an error message pops up noting that the month number should be between 0 and 12. The error is caught, but it takes the filer an extra step and someone already intimidated by the tax laws may be upset because software purchased to help out has just reinforced the filer's lack of tax knowledge. Problem entries, however, are likely to be caught by TaxACT's helpful alerts option. Red alerts indicate something needs to be corrected before the return is filed, usually incomplete or inconsistent data.
Yellow alerts identify potential problems or suggested additional taxpayer attention.
Green alerts offer potential tax saving tips, meaning you may want to go back and make changes to your return. The alerts check both federal and state entries and are a nice feature. However, they run after the return is finished as part of the review process. It would be nice if they could be activated beforehand so that the warnings could be weighed before information was entered. All three programs loaded quickly and without incident on a Windows 98 system.