What software do you use to file your taxes?
Hi I am sure this has been explored in many posts. I just wanted to see pros and cons of the different softwares. Free or donate ware or pay? What do you use and why?
Posted Feb 26, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC
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I use SimpleTax. It’s free and has the nicest looking interface. Easy to use
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I just tried SimpleTax and Turbo Tax at the same time. SimpleTax gets the job done still but their user interface is horrible. No color coding font to make important information stand out. Lack of explanation on important matter. Broken links when it does try to give a explanation. Also everything is listed on one page which mean it looks like a cluster fuck. The only good thing was the RRSP calculator but you can google one anytime.
Use Turbo Tax instead. The way they format their text and give explanation is way more user friendly.
Studiotax is hot garbage. You might as well do it the paper way if your going to use it.
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I have used Simpletax, Turbotax, cheap accountants, medium priced accountants and expensive accountants.
If your return is not complex at all, I liked simpletax because it's free. I use this for my wife's returns.
I felt like Turbotax was maybe a bit more thorough so if you have multiple sources of income maybe it's worth paying the fee to make sure you cover all the bases.
Cheap accountants will cost you money. Maybe not this year but eventually they will fuck something up and the CRA will come knocking.
Medium priced accountants can provide a good service for medium complexity returns. You're essentially paying for no errors and you may get the occasional tip to reduce taxes.
Expensive accountants are architects. They, along with lawyers will create structures and basically cut your taxes down to the minimum possible. This is mainly for people with either a lot of investable assets, companies and/or multiple income sources. Obviously they can't do much with just a simple salary.
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I've used Simple Tax, Turbo Tax, Ufile, and H&R Block over the years.
I'll be using Simple Tax this year because my income and my spouse's are fairly straight forward. I also have a good grasp on what I can claim in terms of charitable donations, medical expenses, child care, etc. So I know that I won't really miss anything entering them in.
Turbo Tax and Ufile would be my secondary choices if you need more assistance or have slightly more complex forms of income. They do a great job of walking through everything and provide additional tips and support through the process.
Some people love Studio Tax but I think the user interface is needlessly complex and outdated looking. I think you'd find Simple Tax has a more intuitive process in my opinion. Just make sure you review their privacy settings and uncheck the personal data collection boxes if you don't want any personal information shared with Simple Tax / Wealth Simple.
I regret using H&R Block but this was at a point where I hadn't filed my taxes for a number of years so I was desperate to get it over with. I do not recommend going there, and I'd recommend seeing professional tax accountant over these guys if you have years worth of taxes to file all at once.
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I'm self employed and use turbo tax. Walks you through everything and is easy to use. Worth paying for it since my return is a bit more complex.
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studiotax. basically requires you to still know your stuff but allows you full control with (as far as i can tell) all slips and situations, gets approved yearly to efile using cra database (fills in t4 etc automatically), and is free/pwyw
I second Studiotax. I've been using it for the past 3 years. It's free from their site every year and will open last years file to carry everything forward for you as well.
You can simply tell it to download all the information that's already been filed with the CRA (T4, T5, etc), import, and pre-fill all the forms.
I think a lot of people will just hit "file my claim" at that point.
If you don't have many deductions (kids, tuition, medical), then that may be actually all than needs to be done.
Another long time StudioTax user here.
The price is right, it accommodates Autofill and Netfile, will import info from the previous year's return and StudioTax doesn't have any information about us. (Other than the usual "who is using our website" tracking info.)
The interview process is less tedious than some of the competitors. (It sometimes uses a tick box "do any of these apply to you?" page where others have page after page of "does this apply to you?" questions.)
We find it great for end of year tax planning, eg. how much to withdraw from RRSPs? should we realize capital gains? are we on track to use up AMT? what should we do if we want to top to bracket? We use the previous year's software to quickly try some options and when we find the right combination we can save the file with a unique name so that we don't overwrite the previous year's return.
It is always amusing to get downvoted for honestly answering a
question.
(And yes I did go through and upvote everyone else who got downvoted for answering the question.)