I have read the different topics about The-TAB...
I now use Anime Studio pro and The-TAB 2.2 pro and there are both fantastic !
You don't work the same way with those programs but i could make that in The-TAB after only 3 days of use to test the drawing and the animation options...
I think the 2.2 version is very good and the best way to know how it works and what it can is to download the clipmovie file from their site : http://www.the-tab.com
(As a normal teacher, not from an animation school, I could obtain the academic pro version for 150 euros instead of 500 euros.)
If you can't see them, you can download those small gifs here :
I looked at The TAB, as well as CreaToon (http://www.creatoon.com/), and ToonBoom. They all do cutouts animations (none are advanced enough to offer Bones and IK), so it came down to pricing and popularity. I ended up picking up ToonBoom Studio.
But that was a while ago, and since digging deeper into Moho, I've found I rarely even open TBS, although they do have some features I'd like to see implemented into AS someday...