TurboTax 2020 conundrum re Mac High Sierra O/S

2012 iMac can upgrade to Catalina, please verify your iMac is a 2012 by clickign the Apple Symbol in the upper left of the display and then click About This Mac. It will tell you what year iMac you have.

If you want to wait for the new Silicon iMacs you can however we have zero idea when they will be announced and released. Per the Terms of Use we all agreed to (you too) we cannot speculate about new un-released products, Apple policies, etc.. I would urge you to read the TofU.

Apple recently (as it appears you know) just released the new 2020 27" iMacs which are Intel based. If you need a new Mac then I'd strongly suggest buying one so you can move on with your life rather than waiting. The current 2020 27" iMacs are extremely nice and a major upgrade over your current system. They will also be supported for many years.

Best of luck.

Another 👍🏻 for rkaufmann87's sage advice. Right now the transition timeline for Apple Silicon is too fuzzy to us consumers to allow a reasonable decision based on when you can get the latest development.

We are in the same place--Dear Wife's 2011 iMac has always been the TurboTax computer.

You could purchase Parallels and thus be able to run a macOS Mojave virtual machine pretty easily. Their latest version still supports macOS High Sierra. As long as you have 8GB of RAM or more this should run sufficiently well. They do have a free trial to fully test it out. It's $80 if you choose to buy it.

If you install Parallels you can then install MS Windows within that. What Parallels allows you to do is to run MS Windows or other operating systems and their applications) simultaneously as Mac OS. So to answer your question, if you had Parallels running and MS Windows installed in Parallels then you can run the MS Windows version of TurboTax. You could then toggle between running MS Windows and Mac OS without having to restart the computer.

If you need additional info on Parallels please visit their web site.

If you installed Parallels you'd could run a copy of Windows 10 inside it w/ the Windows version of TurboTax, or you could run macOS inside it with the Mac version of Turbotax.

The easiest method would be on your 10.13 High Sierra iMac w/ Parallels to install a self-contained copy of macOS. This would be installed via Parallels utilizing your physical Macs Recovery Partition. I'm fairly sure Parallels on a 10.13 High Sierra machine would allow you to install directly a 10.14 or 10.15 Mojave or Catalina virtual Parallels machine directly. However the "worst" case is you would install a 10.13 High Sierra Parallels virtual machine...and then once it's working you'd upgrade the virtual machine to Mojave or Catalina. Either way, this would be the quickest and easiest way to get your a self contained macOS that'll use the Home/Business TurboTax you need. And it would be TurboTax for Mac.

The other option is to in fact install Windows 10 in the Parallels virtual machine. The downside of this is you would need to download the Windows 10 disk image (ISO) file from Microsoft. However, this is very easy and you can do it from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

And Parallels would then utilize that image to create a Windows 10-based Parallels virtual machine. If you go this route then you would need to buy TurboTax for Windows. The advantage of this though is that you then have a Windows virtual machine which you could potentially have other uses for beyond TurboTax. The downside is that it is an extra step...but it's not much of an extra step.

How much RAM do you have though? As long as you have 8GB+ you're fine. Otherwise, if you only have 4GB of RAM I'd recommend at a cheap $30 RAM upgrade to bring you up to 8GB total. If you search for "mid 2011 iMac 4gb kit" you can get them for this price on Amazon. If you plan to retire your iMac in the coming months, that's all you need. If you plan to keep it, or give it to a family member, or someone deserving, then you can get an 8GB kit for $50 to have a total of 12GB or even spend $70 to get a 16GB kit.

I had exactly the same problem. After about 30 hours of attempting to use Boot Camp, overriding the Boot Camp plist as suggested in various videos, I ran into a problem creating a bootable USB drive which is required for older Macs. It seems that the Microsoft Windows 10 disk image file is too large for the format requirement of the thumb drive even though the drive was 32 GB. The older (smaller) build version of Windows 10 that was recommended to solve this issue is unfortunately unavailable.

To make a long story short... I downloaded the appropriate trial version of Parallels for your specific Mac operating system (In my case it was Parallels 13) and let Parallels do the job. In approx. 30 minutes the program worked its magic absolutely painlessly. The trial version runs for 15 days before requiring a key code... time enough to see that it will work for you. The bonus of this method is that both Windows and Mac files are easily accessible.

The only problem now is learning Windows, a problem I have avoided since 1987!

I thought the problem was with Apple not Intuit. I also have a 2011. Considered using the online version of turbotax but it does not have a forms view which I've found that I need. Time to purchase a new imac?

I solved my problem inexpensively by purchasing a code for Parallels 13 on ebay. While Windows 10 is certainly not my cup of tea, Parallels 13 (trial download hard to find on their website, but I managed to find it somehow) works flawlessly and automatically downloads Windows 10. The purchased Parallels 13 arrived and sucessfully validated the installed trial version.

It's important to note that the Windows 10 version of TurboTax with Parallels 13 installed had no trouble finding my Mac 2019 tax file to import to the 2020 return.

The current version in Parallels 16 but seems unnecessary to do my taxes. I'll upgrade only if required in the future.

I wouldn’t purchase a new IMac just for the new TurboTax software, especially when my 2011 iMac runs great and during the pandemic when saving every penny helps. H&R TaxCut will work on Safari 13.1.2 and above.

I have parallels but an older version on my mac but with 4gb of ram it runs really slow. I can actually get the new turbo tax and use it on my wife’s MacBook Pro, but I prefer to use my iMac and will get TaxCut since our taxes are simple and doesn’t even need schedule A since the standard deduction is so high that I don’t need to itemize for mortgage interest and taxes.

I am in the same situation and I am very frustrated by the non-support from Intuit.

I keep using my 2011 iMac because it is the last Mac with an internal CD/DVD drive. Can you believe it: it is almost 10 years since Apple made the last Mac with a built-in CD drive! Over the years, I have upgraded the RAM and installed a 1TB Samsung SSD drive, and the iMac is running as charm as always, and fits my needs perfectly with High Sierra.

I don't understand why TurboTax has to require Mojave to run. There is nothing wrong, not even any security issue with all the latest updates. If this can not be resolved, 2020 could be my last year to use TurboTax.

Add me to this unfortunate group. I love my mid 2011 iMac and while, I will consider upgrading, I'm not ready and don't appreciate being forced into it. Always did my own taxes and been using Turbo Tax for many years. Might consider the online version but I'm intrigued with the aforementioned TaxCut option.

Has anyone used both TaxCut and Turbo Tax and willing to give brief comparison?

P.S. Wife just handed me our 2nd stimulus check (shocked it wasn't direct deposit). Looks like Apple may be getting that money.