Dear Turbo: I bought and used TurboTax 2010 for the first time last year. I assumed that I could open 2010 for Tax Year 2011 and you would simply download or update my program for a nominal fee of perhaps $25.00? Not so. I found out I had to go out and spend $79.99 for a new Premier program for this year. That struck me as terrible customer service. You should honor your customer base and your product by offering reduced rates and automatic updates providing a private customer code of some sort. Why hasn't this been done? Frank Johnson

It has always been like that. And as long as a company makes enough money, they won't change it either.
If you really want to save some money on the software, you could file for an extension(estimating how much taxes you might owe and paying that with the extension) and then buy the software later in the summer for a discount at Amazon.

Anyway, you might want to add you complaint in the Turbotax forum:
http://ttlc.intuit.com/