2010 QuickTax Review & Giveaway

A vital component of successful financial planning is the ability of any individual to track, determine and report their financial information over a period of time. I use a number of extensive excel spreadsheets to track my investments and expenses to better understand how my financial success is improving over various periods of time and when it comes to tax time that preparation pays off to have information organized in a few key places to prepare my annual tax return.

Taxes bring along a lot of anxiety for many Canadians each year especially when you consider the complexities and differences everyone has in tracking, determining and reporting their returns each year. Each individual has different income considerations, exemptions, investments and/or dependants to consider and with new government incentive programs for income splitting, home renovations, education and retirement savings tax time can be a very difficult part of the year for many Canadians.

Accountants and tax professionals are great resources for helping you to determine your tax return or liability but many Canadians still choose or prefer to do their own taxes and seek the best method of doing so for both their time and money.

I’ve always completed my own tax returns since being old enough to file a return and over the last two years I’ve decided to use the online version of QuickTax as my tax software of choice. The reasons for this were/are fairly simple: QuickTax is easy to use, it simplifies my deductions and impact of investment income, allows me to see my tax return developing and has the best resources available to help me ensure my return is accurate, complete and maximized.

This year Intuit Canada has been kind enough to supply me with a complimentary version of their QuickTax Platinum 2009 for review and two copies of their best selling QuickTax Standard 2009 to give away to two readers of this website.


QuickTax Platinum 2009

Last year was my first time using the QuickTax Platinum Online Edition and found the process quick, simple and straightforward. Each online edition of Intuit’s QuickTax allows you to complete a single return and with Claire still completing her post secondary education I’m only required to pay for one return since the QuickTax Online Student version is free.

This year I was excited to use my supplied copy of QuickTax Platinum 2009 because of a few key financial developments in my life over the last year:

• I bought my first home and plan to put to use both the HRTC (Home Renovation Tax Credit) and HBTC (First-Time Home Buyers’ Tax Credit)
• I used savings in my RSP to make a withdrawal and take advantage of the HBP (Home Buyers’ Plan)
• Potentially transfer unused tuition credits from Claire to myself to determine if I can maximize this year’s tax return

The Online Edition of QuickTax Platinum 2009 allows for 1 return for $29.99 with the CD/Download Edition allowing up to a total of 8 returns for $69.99. Comparing the differences between all versions can be seen easily on Intuit’s website between CD/Download editions and online editions with their CD/Download Comparison Chart and Online Comparison Chart.

The big difference for most consumers will be choosing between QuickTax Standard and QuickTax Platinum. The Platinum Edition provides tax tips for investment sales of stocks, bonds, mutual funds or employee stock plans as well as help for rental property income, expenses and refinancing. The Platinum Edition should be your default choice if you have difficulty determining capital gains/losses of your investment portfolio.

With the volatility of the stock market during 2008 and 2009 many investors will have capital losses to carry forward, consider or to apply to previous capital gains over the past three years.

QuickTax Platinum comes with two key features called the Stock Trade Tracker and Capital Gains Analyzer. I personally use a group of integrated excel spreadsheets to track my portfolio activity and returns, but if you’re an investor who has difficulty tracking your investment portfolio the Stock Trade Tracker allows you to track your investment activity over the past year to record what gains or losses were made in your portfolio.  The Capital Gains Analyzer is a useful tool if you’re trying to understand the impact on your taxes for 2009. This tool will let you compare different investments to see which type benefits you more depending on your marginal tax rate (MTR).

QuickTax Platinum 2009 also gives you access to the RRSP Wizard which I found to be a very useful tool in completing my fathers’ tax return this year. This tool allows you to enter different RRSP contribution amounts to see the impact on your refund for the past tax year. For an individual who chooses to make a lump sum contribution before the RRSP deadline this tool can have considerable value in visualizing what different amounts contributed can do to the outcome of your return. QuickTax Platinum also provides the Pension Income Splitting Optimizer for retired couples that allow them to see the impact of income splitting on their collective returns.

There are three main components of QuickTax that I find useful versus filling out the traditional paper tax return.

The first is QuickTax’s introduction that asks questions on income and deductions that help you to identify what changed in your past tax year, what affects your return for 2009 and what could affect your return that you might have forgotten or overlooked. More than once in the past few years, and this year as well, I forgot to include key information or deductions that made a moderate improvement in my tax return. Logging medical expenses, source of income or charitable donations is easy to enter and review.

The QuickTax Support Centre offers users help options via email, chat or phone that I find invaluable to completing my tax return. There are a host of tax related websites for Canadians to use and access but direct questions are easy to find and information on what qualifies you for certain deductions is laid out in a logical and organized fashion.

Online security is also a very important component of choosing any tax software. QuickTax allows you to save your return in a printable PDF and filing online is easy, simple and safe. Keeping past returns on your computer to upload into new returns is also an easy way to carry forward unused tuition credits or expenses that weren’t used up on your past tax return.


Recommendation:

QuickTax Platinum 2009 is a comprehensive tax preparation tool that was vital in helping me determine my tax return for 2009 as well as the returns of my immediate family. I highly recommend readers consider using this useful tax software, in any form, if you enjoy managing your own finances and want a better understanding of how your annual tax return unfolds.


Contest Rules:

1. Contestants may enter by commenting on this post with their first name & last initial or internet nickname/alias
2. Contest is open to Canadian residents only
3. One entry per contestant
4. Contestants must be a RSS subscriber of Triaging My Way To Financial Success (Join Here through a RSS reader or E-Mail)
5. Deadline for all entries will be 9:00 p.m. EST on Sunday February 28th, 2010. I will randomly draw two winners from the contest and announce them in a post on Monday March 1st, 2010.

Disclosure: I was not directly or indirectly compensated by Intuit Canada for the information, review or promotion of this product. I have no investment position in my portfolios that biases my opinion of this product or company
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A Need for Stricter Mortgage Lending?

Government intervention has a longstanding history of coming on the heels of an already established negative trend and Jim Flaherty’s announcements today for “action to strengthen housing financing” in Canada appears to be another case of just that.

Home ownership is at record highs, interest rates are at or near record lows and home prices over the past 8-10 years have doubled (or more) in many key real estate markets across the country.

2009 showed one alarming statistic according to CAAMP:

• 18% of all mortgages in Canada in 2009 were amortized over more than 25 years with 47% of new home owners in 2009 electing for a mortgage amortization of longer than 25 years.
• 19% were amortized over 30 years and 23% over 35 years

With the elimination of the 40 year amortization it appears new home buyers are still selecting the longest amortization in order to spread out the cost and ensure affordability of their first home. My opinions on home ownership are of a conservative nature and many friends and family have argued or disagreed with me about what risks are present currently in the Canadian real estate market. I think the moves today by the federal government, whether timely or not, indicate to current and prospective home owners that the market might not be as fairly priced as many believe and that financial prudence might be in order when considering your first mortgage. In my current household we determined the affordability of our mortgage not on our combined incomes but on the highest income exclusively. There were a number of reasons for choosing this approach but the most important was the fact that we wanted to ensure that one either one of us could carry all our combined monthly costs (aside from student debt repayment) on their income to create our own margin of safety. This allows us to have an adequate amount of savings now, in the future and a buffer if one of us wishes to stay at home part-time with our future family.
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Book Review: What To Eat

Part of being engaged to an aspiring young dietetic professional (Claire) is that I'm exposed to both voluntary and involuntary experiences, information and literature on a host of subjects related to nutrition, health and well being.  As a registered nurse (RN) some of what I learn is relevant to my individual practice and other information gets stored under a simple "interesting fact" category in my head.

Recently Claire has been reading a book by Marion Nestle titled What to Eat that initially started off with my perception as another get healthy book written by a nutrition professional to inspire change in the reader's eating habits and awareness.  Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have given this book a second thought or picked it up myself to glance a portion on my own time but when Claire mentioned that it discussed "how big food companies try to influence our choices" I became immediately interested in what the author had to contribute.

Marion does an excellent job, in my opinion, of identifying a number of internal opportunities and threats of the food industry and certain food related businesses in how old and new external factors are currently shaping the food industry.  Not only does she take the time to discuss how companies are interacting with their consumers, but takes note of changing habits in purchasing, supply and demand of consumers.

For any investor holding shares in publicly traded companies with activities in the grocery, food service, food manufacturing or food marketing industries the perceptions of the Nestle are very important and should not be overlooked.  This book not only had an impact in my own awareness of what I eat but also the barriers that many companies I currently own shares in currently face and the demographic shifts they are encountering in a globalized world.

Nestle doesn't make any stunning conclusions in her work, but the time she takes in a number of chapters to discuss how corporate America and global food companies interact and manipulate consumer behaviour towards purchasing and consumption of food made me re-evaluate some of the holdings I have in my portfolios and reassess how much exposure I want to have to certain individual products, brands and product lines.

This isn't a book I would rush out to read to make any quick money in the market, but if you hold any companies that operate within the food industry directly or indirectly then skimming through the book might be worthwhile to your understanding of how the industry operates and how that can best suit you as an investor.

On a personal level I found the book very informative.  Nothing in the book changed any of my individual eating or purchasing habits, but I did re-examine my portfolios to assess the risk I might be exposed to for certain shifts in consumption and invest in others I hadn't identified from a view of consolidation within an industry or sector.


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