Those tax preparation programs - (continued)

It pays to ask questions. I was at the pharmacy in the big supermarket yesterday morning, to ask about one of my medications, and after leaving there, I decided to stop in at the Postal Outlet in the little strip mall beside the supermarket to pick up an envelope for mailing in my tax return. 

The Oriental gentleman who runs that Postal Outlet is a really nice guy, and we got talking about these tax preparation programs. I said I'd tried a couple and wasn't very impressed because they didn't seem to be able to handle everything I wanted to include. He said that he has been using one of them for years, and it works very well, so I asked him which one. He showed me the program in a package for sale, and I asked him the price. He said, "$15.00 plus tax." I said, "Sold!"

It's called 'Intuit Electronic Tax Forms Tax Year 2012' and includes all the government approved forms, the 2012 tax guide, and it does 2 returns if you need to do that.

I brought it home, installed the program from its CD, went through the registration process, and then prepared my tax return. The results of that came out to one cent different for my refund compared to a pen and calculator paperwork copy I had done the day before. So I went ahead and completed the Netfile to the Canada Revenue Agency, and they sent me back my confirmation number for reference, and I was all done about 1:00 PM yesterday.

So my Oriental friend at the Postal Outlet was absolutely right - it is a really good program and it works like a charm. I especially liked it because it uses the same forms as if you were doing it on paper, so you can be sure you have it all entered correctly and haven't left out anything. It also checks the finished version for errors or mistakes, and confirms that you don't have any before it tries to send it in for you. So I would have to say it was money well spent. And the good news is, if you have a refund coming, it will arrive much faster when you file your return electronically.