StudioTax 2017 released for PC | Income tax filing | Discussion forum

I will again be using Simple Tax - it is extremely user friendly, offers an excellent multi-platform web-based interface that is especially friendly for mobile devices (though it's equally excellent for desktop PCs, of which I prefer). It is offered on a donation basis, though you can choose to be unfairly cheap and not donate anything. If your annual household income is more than $25,000, you should donate something. For a household of three income tax filers, we typically donate about $20 total, or roughly the same we would've paid for Ufile except without Ufile's 4 income tax return filing limit (even if they offer an extra "4 bonus returns" in most years).

Highly recommend it! 🙂

On the Web: http://www.simpletax.ca/

Also offers a basic personal income tax estimator/calculator that's among the best, though TaxTips.ca offers a more advanced one for other types of credits and deductions.

Cheers,
Doug

voodoo22 said
Simpletax does look good, but I will stick with a downloadable program which allows you can securely control your data.

I know Simpletax says they encrypt and only you can decrypt, but even if that holds true, the fact is you're storing your extremely sensitive data with a 3rd party.

You'll have to excuse my way of thinking. I'm not part of the app generation, so I don't so easily give up the control of my information. I still use maps printed on paper, lol!   

AltaRed said
No fear. Even those of us with information extensively in the cloud, I wouldn't permit my tax information/returns to reside on a third party website either. Has to be on my PC and on backup drive and in the cloud.  

It might surprise you that I prefer to read printed newspapers, magazines and books. And, like you, I had concerns with data security but, the more I thought about it, they're using bank-level encryption so if I can trust my bank with online banking, that should alleviate my concerns over data security. And, I think you can "delete" your previous tax returns that are saved in your SimpleTax account, if you wish, once you've filed them electronically and, hopefully, saved a PDF copy of your tax return. 🙂

StudioTax is fairly decent, though I found it a bit "glitchy" when I tried it a few years ago, sort of like GenuTax, which I opted to use that year.

My favourite tax return software was still TaxWiz until it was bought my Intuit and turned into QuickTax Basic and then TurboTax Basic.

TurboTax also has a desktop version called TurboTax Free Forms that is very similar to SimpleTax that you might like and it is free. If I didn't use SimpleTax, that'd be my choice. 🙂

I wonder if Thomson Reuters is regretting the timing of their purchase of Dr Tax Software (i.e., Ufile)? 😉

Cheers,
Doug

SavingIsGood said
Been using QuickTax, now TurboTax for years and years and have no intention of changing it.  

I agree, it's a good piece of software; it's too bad they just didn't lower the price or give people unlimited returns for all income levels and tax types. 🙂

We used to use QuickTax before opting for TaxWiz when Intuit raised the prices. We loved TaxWiz until it was turned into QuickTax Basic when Intuit bought it too and removed the ability to have RRSP deductions. We liked Ufile as a decent alternative (we don't like to pay more than $20-25 for at least 6-8 returns of all income levels) until they kept lowering the number of returns to 4 so I switched to GenuTax for one year. It was OK but a bit "clunky" and had a few bugs I didn't like. Been using SimpleTax for several years now.

The federal government should give us a tax deduction of up to $40 that is a straight refundable tax credit from our taxable income because, frankly, that portion of our earned income that pays for tax filing software should be fully tax exempt. Either that or adopt the Norway model whereby CRA prepares our tax returns for us, provides any refunds or tells us what we owe and determines benefit eligibility.

Cheers,
Doug

Jon said
Doug, the government pretty much know how much tax we need to pay, along with benefit that we are entitle to, is just that the tax filing industry have some friends in the government by giving out political contribution.  

Exactly! That's probably largely it...we could easily implement the Norway model and save countless hundreds of millions of dollars on tax auditors, both in the employ of government or for a myriad of public accounting firms. 😉

Cheers,
Doug