A friend of mine found out that I always did my own taxes manually every year. He then pointed me to StudioTax, a free tax preparation software for Canadian.
This software is really powerful and convenient. When you run the program, it asks for your province of residence and the kind of claims you will make. If you study, you will claim T22. Workers claim T4. If you have savings or investments, you will receive form T5 from the bank. There are also selections for charity, RRSP, etc.
Once you have made your claim choices, the screens you need to fill are very simple. It is basically copy-and-paste from your forms to the screens. The software will put the informations on the correct columns. If you make mistake, it will give you warnings before you generate the NETFILE file.
It usually takes me about 30 minutes to fill one form. But with StudioTax, I was done in about 15 minutes or so. And that was my first time using it. If I have to do it again, I am sure it would take me less time.
Oh, you can only save and generate at most 20 returns using StudioTax. I guess it's not for professionals. Well, they have more information on their website. Overall, I am very pleased with this software and would recommend it to you if you have not-very-complicated returns.
I am sure it can do much more than what I said here, but since I didn't use it, I wouldn't comment on it. You can download and use it for free on their website.
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