TaxAct: best alternative to Turbo Tax?

I did my taxes the other night. At first, I used the Free Fillable Forms like I'd used last year - it is supposed to be the most basic "do-it-yourself" online method, similar to just filing electronically with the IRS. But it's not the same. It's run by a third-party (a tax accountant trade group), and it's crippled for that reason (see this interesting Fatwallet discussion). I quit when I found out that I wouldn't be able to import my capital gains but I would have to do them manually. Since my broker gives me free access to Gainskeeper, which automatically creates the capital gains information, I wasn't going to do it manually (it's only about a dozen trades).

The next thing I tried was "Complete Tax from E-Smart" (internet-taxprep.com), which was a mistake - minor issues in how it accepted my input led me to skip past that. I glanced at Turbo Tax, but I try to avoid the market leader in many cases to stimulate competition - and it is obvious that Turbo Tax was using its position to impose higher costs, since it was charging me $50 for my return. I then tried H&R Block, although the company's legion of tax employees makes me wary that they would produce a crippled product - and it also required manual entry for capital gains.

I settled on TaxAct. To avoid manual entry of capital gains, I had to pay $10, and they also charged me $5 to save a backup copy, but that's a far cry from $50. I was satisfied with its interface, although I actually had to load up IE to import my .csv file with the capital gains.

Long-term tax rates

It's hard for me to see the value added in some of financial innovations and institutions. Credit card companies often simply allow people to indebt themselves more. Insurance companies must have had crazy margins before Geico started this price war. Did this rate swap add value to the situation?

What if we had a tax structure that encouraged real long-term investing? We already have long-term taxes rates for 1+ year of owning a stock; how about additional tax breaks for 5 or 10-year ownership? Or how about higher short-term rates and a more gradual long-term rate?

The short-term craziness of financial markets today is a real distraction from what matters. People don't think for the long-term. That's why we had these dumb loans: the people in charge of these companies were only thinking a few years into the future.

Marginal Income Tax Rates

Why is it so fucking hard to find a table detailing the marginal income tax rates pre-2001?