Product Reviews
March/2000
 |
Intuit Canada. "QuickTax Deluxe for Windows" Reviewed By: |
QuickTax is the beneficiary of the shake out in the Personal Home Tax Preparation market. A couple of years ago there was CanTax, Home Tax, QuickTax; and a couple of other lesser knowns. Then TaxPrep, owner of Home Tax, purchased CanTax. Then CCH purchased TaxPrep. Now CCH has sold the customer list of Home Tax and CanTax to Intuit the developer of QuickTax. CCH has retained the software and the right to re-enter the field.
We received the "Deluxe" edition of QuickTax for evaluation; and therefore are comments are restricted to that version. The Deluxe edition requires a 486 or better, Windows 3.1 or later. NT is not supported. 8 MB of memory with 16 MB recommended. 10 MB free space on your hard drive is required. A 6x CD-Rom drive but faster is better. You do not require a printer if you are net filing your return.
We began by reading the manual that was supplied by the developer. This is considered a novel step; but is the one I usually use. I then proceeded to use the program recommended by Joan in the February issue of Read.me called "End-It-All". I have found that closing all programs in the task bar except systray and explorer is an absolutely required step for installing Income Tax Software.
We inserted the disk into the CD-Rom drive, auto-install immediately brought up the program, and I had nothing else to do; but say "yes" to printing the Readme.txt. After installing, we logged onto the internet and tried the live update function. This went as smooth as the proverbial baby’s bum.
We were then ready to begin our first tax return. If you prepared your return last year using QuickTax 98, you can bring forward your information. Also, you can import from CanTax 98 or Home Tax 98.as well as Quicken or QuickBooks.
When you open the program, a calendar comes up. This calendar has all the tax dates from December 1, 1999 through to April 30, 2000. The closing date for Self Employed is June 30, 2000; but this is ignored by Intuit. The final date for crystallizing stock market losses is noted in December correctly.
We began using the EasyStep Interview. For maximum effect, you require a sound card and speakers for the Easy Step Interview. We began with a couple known as Billy Bob Gates and Steve Bullroar. The program accepted the couple with two males and an incorrect SIN number; which we found surprising. Most professional programs as well as CanTax 98 would not accept and allow you to proceed without a valid SIN number. We gave the couple three children. We followed the interview and recorded T4 income, Commission Income, Self Employment Income and expense. Farm Income, Fishing Income ( yes – the boat’s name was Jenny) We gave Billy Bob a former wife to whom he is paying support. Steve attended York U and had tuition credits. We put in just about everything we could think one taxpayer could reasonably endure in one tax year.
Using the summary feature we were able to track what was happening on a dynamic basis as various items were entered. Thus we knew what are income, taxable income, taxes payable, and refund due for each taxpayer.
When you go to print, you must have the CD Rom in the drive. This reminded us of our first version (1A) of 123 that required us to have our disk in the drive. The program then runs a diagnostic on each schedule pointing out various options to use such as carrying forward to next year donations etc. that can not be deducted in the current year because of limitations. If you wish to qualify for Net filing, you must complete a form with additional information. Before you can Net File, you must have received your WAC from CCRA (Formerly Rev Can). In filing your 1998 return, you must have used a qualifying Tax program and met other requirements and limitations. About 3.8 million taxpayers were WAC’d by CCRA.
The deluxe version of the software is available from the Business Depot at $14.99 plus tax after giving the in store discount coupons effect.
For a cost of $17.24, tax included this software gets a six cow rating!!
Overall I found the program to be easy to use. I suggest you have a copy of the CCRA Tax Guide handy. The guide is available free from the Canada Post. A copy of the T1 form from Canada Post is also helpful. If 3.8 million taxpayers purchase this program at $14.99; that would be $56,962,000. The taxes would be $ 3,984,400.00 in GST and $ 4,556,960.00 in OST.
Karl Stanley, CGA
President, The Personal Computer Club of Toronto