Yeah, good old Intuit has reasonable enough prices on software, but they like to make profits on their upgrades and "premium" services.

I have run into a problem trying to maintain payroll tax table without upgrading. First I have to pay for the payroll tax table service every year, then after a couple of years, I have to upgrade the software as a three year-old (approx) version will no longer support tax table downloads.  Sometimes, with a software upgrade of a few hundred dollars, I think I get a free year of payroll tax service, but honestly don't remember and am not bothering to look it up.

It all gets a little pricey to me, but it is so effective, that I can't resist investing what's necessary to keep going. If I had no payroll to maintain, I'd probably be fine with the older versions.  My version of QB prints all the forms I need, from 940's, 941's, W-2's, W-3's, as well as state tax and state Department of Labor forms.

I use QB for business, regularly upgrading, and still using six year old Quicken Windows 2000 for my personal finances, and am happy with it.