H&RBlock schedules regular monthly updates throughout the entire tax season and the planned release dates are published with the initial app release. The app tracks each form as Preliminary or Final and all the forms used in your return must be finalized before the app will permit you to file the return. That said, each update is essentially a complete replacement of the previous version and I have never had to backtrack or reenter previous data between updates or noticed any change in the questionnaire. The questions do not change, just the reporting format, and perhaps some underlying calculations. As Texas has no state income tax I have no direct experience, but it appears the earlier updates are due to last minute IRS reporting changes and the later updates are more often the result of last minute tweaks from the various state tax agencies. Any filing delays I have are almost exclusively waiting for third parties to send 1099s or donation receipts. All of which makes the failure of the update function to work properly even more inexplicable.
That sounds pretty much like how TurboTax works other than its updates not being regularly scheduled, and, I ASSume, some other concessions to Intuit's design copyrights.
I've always guessed that bug fixes were major parts of the updates. In my early TT days, I found bugs in even the simple parts/computations, so I can imagine what might have been going wrong in the complicated parts/computations.
As for
each update [being] essentially a complete replacement of the previous version (which you originally questioned), I'll stick with my guess that it's to avoid the multitudinous glitch possibilities that a line by line update would present.
