"The approach we have had is to have your legacy program available while you are cutting your teeth on the new program," says Scott Fleszar, the VP of strategic marketing for the company's professional software unit. "The first year you hope you have 10 percent of user customers on the new product and work out the kinks." That way, in the second year on the market, the rewrites have a better chance of avoiding major issues and most of the user base will be ready to switch.

That approach would have helped some ATX and TaxWorks users who were begging their suppliers to let them use the older version while the disasters with the new software were addressed. The problems with TRx Software Development were so severe that the Better Business Bureau lowered TRX's rating to an F and during February, the BBB of Middle Tennessee issued a statement headlined " TRX Software Development, Inc.=Tax Preparer's Nightmare".

Many complainers who used TaxWorks and TAX dropped their packages so they could continue operating and Thomson, with its UltraTax, and Drake Software appear to have benefited greatly. Fleszar anticipates the tax software buying season should be a busy one. "We think there is going to more professionals in the market than usual," he says.