Just stumbled across this free software called Taxman to prepare Canadian personal income taxes. Its license says it is freeware and can be used for any number of returns. It claims to do be able everything the common commercial packages like Quicken do EXCEPT Efile or Netfile. Instead it prints the forms, of which he says there are 83 in the program. The other exception is that it won't do Quebec taxes.
It sounds promising since the author/programmer says he prepares taxes for a living using this program and his returns are accepted by the CRA. There are versions for 2002 up to the current one for 2006 taxes. That should mean that he's had the chance to work out the kinks. I downloaded the 2006 program at http://pacificcoast.net/~gthompson/ and installed it on a Windows XP machine. The file is just under 10MB; total time from download click to program open on the desktop (most of it to run two virus scanners on the file (free versions of course) and read the license terms ... skeptical type that I am) was about five minutes.
Since I had already signed up for Quicken's on-line preparation service before discovering this program, I'll be able to compare the results in the next few weeks. Has anyone used Taxman? Comments?
Wednesday 31 January 2007
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3 comments:
It is fine. Two similar programs linked here:
http://freetax.surf.to/
http://www.peeltech.ca/mytax.shtml
For netfile options, I prefer Studiotax. Other options including it are included here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NETFILE
Trust Wikipedia to have information on the topic! Great links. Thanks very much.
I've never understood why the CRA itself doesn't create and distribute its own free software for tax returns. After all, they give us free paper forms, it's their taxes we are paying, their data entry we are doing, their data cleaning the software performs, their business logic and tax rules being applied.
http://www.studiotax.com/en/main.htm
This one has NETFILE included in their free program. Haven't used it yet though.
FT
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