The TurboTax website also says that the the Home & Business edition is right for you if you are “a contract worker or self-employed & want to file personal & business taxes in one place”. A TurboTax customer who typically purchases the Standard version and had some business income in 2011 might reasonably infer that she will need the more expensive edition to complete her 2011 taxes.

But, that’s not quite accurate. All flavours of TurboTax will allow you to complete your taxes if you only use the forms method for preparing your taxes. The difference between the various TurboTax editions occurs in the extra help in the interview questions and in the number of returns (8 in Standard, 12 in Premier and Home & Business and 20 in TurboTax 20). So, if you are a TurboTax customer and are comfortable preparing Schedule 3 (Capital Gains or Losses in 2011) or T2125 (Statement of Business or Professional Activities), Standard can do the job for you.

Related Reading:

• What’s New in TurboTax 2010
• What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway)
• Quick Review: UFile 2007
• Which Tax Software?
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax

Which TurboTax Edition is Right for you? is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

Intuit has just launched a new tax filing product in Canada that literally makes filing taxes a snap. If you have an iPhone and a very simple tax situation (just T4 slips), you can download an app from Apple’s iTunes store that will allow you to take a photo of a T4 slip with iPhone’s built-in camera, walk you through a couple of questions such as Name, Date of birth, Province of residence etc. and generate a tax file. You can then pay $9.99 and NETFILE your tax return right from your iPhone. If the app determines that your tax situation is a more complicated than it can handle, it will offer to transfer your data to TurboTax Online and you’ll be able to complete your taxes through the website.

I saw a demo of the product last week and one of the questions I had was around security. What happens when you lose your phone? Intuit says that since it stores data on its servers and the data is password protected, a loss of the phone will not compromise important personal information such as your SIN number.

Currently, SnapTax is only available on the iPhone. It is not available on the iPad or on phones running Android. I was told that the app works on the iPod Touch but though I was able to download, install and run the app, it wouldn’t let me progress beyond the first couple of screens.

I have a much more complicated tax situation, so I won’t be filing with SnapTax anytime soon. However, as SnapTax adds more capability and starts to cover more tax situations in future years (tuition slips, charitable receipts, RRSP contribution statements etc.), it will make tax filing a breeze for a very large number of Canadians.

Related Reading:

• Filing Taxes
• Review: StudioTax 2007
• Free Personal Finance Software: Microsoft Money Sunset Version
• Start Working on Your Taxes
• VoIP Revisited

Filing Taxes is a Snap with SnapTax is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

• The QuickTax name was changed to reduce confusion with TurboTax and to take advantage of TurboTax advertising spilling over into Canada. The underlying software remains the same and is still being developed in Edmonton and Mississauga.
• TurboTax comes in four flavours: Basic (retails for $19.99), Standard (retails for $39.99), Premier (retails for $69.99) and Home & Business (retails for $99.99). All flavours allow users to prepare their taxes with either an interview method or directly using forms or switching back and forth between the two. The main difference between various product flavours lies in the range and sophistication of the interview process. For example, the Premier edition includes extra guidance if you sold stocks, bonds or mutual funds in 2010. But if you are comfortable preparing your taxes directly with the forms and don’t need any guidance, Basic should be sufficient for your purposes.
• You can file up to 8 returns with Basic and Standard and up to 12 returns with Premier and Home & Business.
• Two new features were introduced in TurboTax 2010: Mapping icons to provide taxpayers with a visual representation of where they are in the tax preparation process and setting flags to remind users of missing charitable donation slips, T-slips yet to receive etc. I can see the utility of the flagging feature because right now, I write down everything I need to double check and manually double check everything before netfiling.
• The new solidarity tax credit (an average of $500 tax credit per household available to Quebec taxpayers who have registered for direct deposit) is supported in TurboTax. The software also supports automatic download of Relevés from Revenu Québec.
• Features such as Life Changes Profiling, importing tax data from UFile or H&R Block, expanded support options (see What’s new in QuickTax 2009) and Audit defence ($39.99 for individuals and $49.99 for Incorporated, see What’s new in QuickTax 2008) introduced in past years are back again.
• Mac users looking for a desktop product are out of luck once again and have to make do with TurboTax Online.
• Qualifying tax payers may be able to file their taxes for free with the TurboTax Free or TurboTax Student through turbotax.ca. Military personnel who performed active duty overseas are eligible to file for free.

I haven’t had a chance to test drive TurboTax just yet, so watch for a future post on my impressions of the new features. TurboTax is available at Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy and other fine retailers. It can also be downloaded from turbotax.ca. Wal-Mart is selling TurboTax Standard for $29.97 ($10 off the retail price) until February 10, 2010.

Related Reading:

• Which TurboTax Edition is Right for you?
• What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway)
• QuickTax responds to complaints
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax
• Questions regarding QuickTax 2009

What’s New in TurboTax 2010 is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

I downloaded and installed UDoTaxes on my Windows Vista laptop and when I ran the software for the first time, it prompted for the usual information such as name, SIN number, Mailing address etc. and created the tax returns for the taxpayer and spouse. The software looks pleasing and follows the typical pattern of listing the summary and forms navigation on the left-hand pane and clickable CRA tax forms on the right-hand pane. You can enter tax data through the T-slips, which look exactly like the ones you receive in the mail. The T-slip screens can be accessed either through the toolbar icons or from the form list or by clicking the corresponding box in the T1 General screen.

UDoTaxes has some clever touches. Clicking on a box in the T1 General lists the related forms, which allows you to select the one you want to work with. If a form is incomplete, it is prefixed with an “x” button the forms panel. A RRSP Optimizer and a Pension Split Optimizer are built into the tool. In my opinion, UDoTaxes looks just a bit more polished and a little bit more responsive than StudioTax but both products are extremely good and the price is right.

Related Reading:

• Review: StudioTax 2007
• Questions regarding QuickTax 2009
• What’s New in StudioTax 2008?
• Quick Review: GenuTax 2007
• Which Tax Software?

Quick Review: UDoTaxes 2009 is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

1. Free File Friday for Seniors: On February 26, 2010, tax payers 60 years or over can open a tax file and file their taxes at a later date for free. Check this web page for more details.
2. Students, regardless of income level, can file their taxes through UFile.ca at anytime through the tax season. More details are available here.
3. Families with total income of $20,000 or less are not charged a fee to NETFILE or print their tax return.

Giveaway: I am giving away 10 vouchers that can be used to prepare and file an entire family’s tax returns at UFile.ca. You can enter by simply leaving a comment in this post (please do not send an entry via email) and don’t forget to include your email address. If you are reading this through your favourite RSS Reader, you have to click through to the website and scroll to the bottom of the page and type in your comment. Some quick rules: (1) Deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, February 26, 2010. (2) One entry per person. (3) Canadian residents only. (4) I treat your privacy very seriously. Your email will be used for the sole purpose of contacting you if you happen to win. (5) I’ll pick ten entries at random and announce the winner after the deadline.

Go Canada! Go!

Related Reading:

• UFile Online 2011 Tax Software Giveaway
• H&R Block At Home 2011 Tax Software Giveaway
• Five years and counting…
• This and That: Market Rally & UFile Giveaway
• Bloggers for Charity Update and Quicken Giveaway

Free Filing Options from UFile.ca and Giveaway is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

In addition to entering in the giveaway, readers asked a number of questions in the comments section of the post. I’ll try and answer some of them in this post.

DownshiftDad (and many others) asked:

Any word on a Mac version? They disappointed me a few years ago by discontinuing it.

Here’s what Geoff Morgan of Intuit Canada said about the Mac version: “For Mac users, we offer QuickTax Online. The look and feel of QuickTax Standard, Platinum and Business Unincorporated are almost identical to the desktop version, with a couple differences. Some tools in the Online versions feature enhanced graphical tools. Probably most relevant to you, the Online versions of QuickTax are interview-only, there are no forms.

QuickTax Online is the extent of our Mac offerings as of today. Intuit Canada pulled our Quicken and QuickBooks for Mac desktop products from the market a few years ago. Demand for the Mac version was low, so we focused our development resources where the vast majority of our customers were, which was PC.

While Mac’s share remains approximately 10-12% of the overall market, it’s an increasingly important consumer and small business segment for us, and we’re working to address it. (Note: We’re a publicly traded company, so I can’t make forward-looking statements.)”

Barry asks:

I also would like to know if you will be reviewing the real free options such as StudioTax and Udotaxes.

I do plan to write about competing software products in the future and time permitting, compare the tax returns generated by tax software from different vendors and report back on what I find. I plan to test drive StudioTax and if there are enough new features to warrant a post, I’ll definitely highlight them. However, I should point out that I requested a meeting with the folks behind StudioTax and did not hear back. My job becomes much easier when someone can just tell me what’s new with their software and I don’t have to go digging through tax software. Udotaxes is a new name to me, so thank you Barry (and thanks for recommending StudioTax earlier) for bringing it to my attention.

Ken asks:

Do these tax programs just interview you? Do you still get the capability to go to each form and enter your own data after the interview process?

The desktop versions of QuickTax allow you to input tax information either through the interview method or directly into the forms. It also allows you to switch back and forth between the two. Other software products use either the interview method or the forms method.

Aolis says:

You didn’t explain what the differences are between the versions. I have filed my own taxes for over a decade but recently got married. Is it worth getting the Standard? What about for investments with capital gains?

The main difference between Basic, Standard and Platinum versions lies in the range of questions asked during the interview process. If you are comfortable directly inputting data with the forms method the Basic version should be sufficient for you.

Stay tuned as I have more tax software reviews and giveaways coming up.

Related Reading:

• What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway)
• Which Tax Software?
• QuickTax responds to complaints
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax
• What’s New in TurboTax 2010

Questions regarding QuickTax 2009 is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

I asked QuickTax executives to give us a rundown on what’s new this year. Here’s what they told me (my comments are in italics):

1. Life Changes Profiling, available on Standard and higher tiers, guides tax filers through life changes that affect their tax return such as a marriage, a new baby, starting a business or going back to school. In my limited test drive of QuickTax Standard so far, I found this feature to be well integrated within the interview process.
2. You can now import 2008 tax data from UFile or H&R Block and automatically import tax slips from epost.ca, CanadaHelps.org and RRSP providers. A lot of tax filers seem to demand an import feature but I find this to be of marginal use. After all, how long does it take to type in your name, date of birth, address and SIN number? However, I can see directly importing tax forms being useful in eliminating input errors.
3. QuickTax has expanded its support options and offers free technical support through phone, chat and email for all product tiers. A new feature called “Ask a Tax Expert”, which costs $15, allows tax filers to ask unlimited questions and receive responses directly from a taxexpert. I found that QuickTax has integrated its community within Standard, which might be useful if you are stuck. For example, the screen where you enter your income slips has, on the right sidebar, useful questions like “Where do you enter union and professional dues?”, “I’ve cashed bonds. Where do I enter them on my tax return?”, etc. The answers come from QuickTax community of users but a quick check revealed that the quality of responses is very good.
4. Audit defence was successful last year and is once again available for $39.99 this year. I wrote about this last year and have little to add to my comments. See post What’s new in QuickTax 2008.
5. The online version of QuickTax has two free options. QuickTax Free Online and QuickTax Student Online. If you are preparing just one return and are comfortable preparing taxes over the Internet, the online versions of Standard ($16.99) and Platinum ($29.99) are much cheaper.

Giveaway: I received copies of Standard and Platinum versions of QuickTax 2009 for review purposes. I have installed and test driven the Standard version but I don’t think I’ll have the time to check out the Platinum version. That’s where you come in. I’m giving away one copy of QuickTax 2009 Platinum (retail value of $69.99) to a lucky reader. You can enter by simply leaving a comment in this post (please do not send an entry via email) and don’t forget to include your email address. If you are reading this through your favourite RSS Reader, you have to click through to the website and scroll to the bottom of the page and type in your comment. Some quick rules: (1) Deadline for entries is 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday, January 26, 2010. (2) One entry per person. (3) Canadian residents only. (4) I treat your privacy very seriously. Your email will be used for the sole purpose of contacting you if you happen to win. (5) I’ll pick one entry at random and announce the winner after the deadline.

Related Reading:

• Questions regarding QuickTax 2009
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax
• Quick Review: UFile 2007
• QuickTax responds to complaints
• Which Tax Software?

What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway) is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

1. StudioTax now has the ability to split pension income for senior couples.
2. Taxpayers can now print a PDF copy of their return without installing third-party software such as CutePDF. Those filing paper returns can select the forms they would like to print.
3. The forms for inputting the T-slip information has been cleaned up. Reporting your share of interest, dividend and distribution income from joint accounts has been made automatic.
4. StudioTax now automatically updates itself by checking if a later version of the software is available on the website.
5. StudioTax has already received Netfile certification from the Canada Revenue Agency. The Netfile-certified version will be available on the website shortly.

The developers are hoping to have a Mac OS version of the software available for Apple users in the near future. Also in the works: software for filing Quebec provincial taxes.

The personal version of StudioTax is free, though the developers are asking for a donation to support their efforts. They are also diversifying by releasing an enterprise version of StudioTax for professional tax preparers. The enterprise version can be used to E-File tax returns. The first 20 returns are free but heavy-duty users are required to buy a license (cost $150) for unlimited returns.

Related Reading:

• Quick Review: UDoTaxes 2009
• Review: StudioTax 2007
• Filing Taxes
• Which Tax Software?
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax

What’s New in StudioTax 2008? is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

QuickTax users will be faced with two questions this year: (1) Should they consider buying Audit Defence? (2) Assuming a taxpayer likes the idea of not having to face CRA alone, can they obtain representation cheaper elsewhere?

The type of users who do their own taxes will typically have very simple tax situations – they have one or two T4s, some RRSP contributions, childcare expenses, charitable donations, dividend and interest income and perhaps a small home-based business – and presumably doesn’t involve a deep understanding of the tax code. In these cases, an “audit” is usually nothing more than the CRA checking to see if they actually have the receipts. For instance, recently my wife’s tax return was selected for review. CRA wanted to see receipts to support her claim for child care expenses, which is a relatively straightforward affair and in my opinion, doesn’t justify paying for expert representation.

Some taxpayers would still rather not face the CRA by themselves, which is understandable considering the awesome power the tax agency wields. They may want to check out the new kid in the block: H&R Block is now selling desktop and web-based tax software for the same price as QuickTax Standard but it looks like they throw in a similar feature called Audit Assistance for free.

Also new this year in QuickTax: a pension income optimizer to take advantage of the new rules that allow seniors couples to split pension income. To my knowledge, UFile was the only software that included an optimizer last year.

Now that QuickTax has increased the number of returns, would you consider going back? Have you been audited by the CRA? If so, what was your experience like? What is your take on Audit Defence? Is it, as Michael James wondered in a recent post, similar to extended warranties sold by retailers? Is this another instance where it is cheaper to self-insure (i.e. hire expert representation after the CRA sends an audit notice)?

[Edit: The original post incorrectly referred to QuickTax 2007. It has now been corrected]

Related Reading:

• What’s New in TurboTax 2010
• What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway)
• Start Working on Your Taxes
• Quick Review: QuickTax Standard for Tax Year 2005
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax

What’s New in QuickTax 2008? is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.

Related Reading:

• Questions regarding QuickTax 2009
• Intuit’s Response on QuickTax
• What’s new in QuickTax 2009 (and Giveaway)
• QuickTax Disappoints
• What’s New in TurboTax 2010

QuickTax responds to complaints is brought to you by Canadian Capitalist -- Helping you to invest & prosper.