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Tax return on dial-up

Monday, Apr. 23, 2012 at 11:46 AM | Comments: 0

Because I have a relatively simple tax return — one job, no kids, no weird deductions — I try almost every year to do it myself.

I have, sometimes, had access to professional accountants, and I have nothing against them. They provide a great service, it just happens to be a service that I don't happen to need.

And I'm pretty wary of all the semi-professional, non-accountant "tax preparers" out there, not least because I've several times tried those services, been delighted that they "found" me a few hundred in extra tax refund, and then been mad as all blazes a few months later, when the government sent me reassessments that clawed back all those fake deductions.

Frankly, I don't do a lot of math here at the Brandon Sun, but I'm pretty good at math (considered minoring in calc at university) and I like to stretch that part of my brain at least once a year.

Heck, sometimes I even try to do my taxes entirely without calculators (it's addition and subtraction, maybe a couple of percentages -- not difficult, mathematically).

Anyway, because I'm doing my own taxes, I use the paper forms that get mailed to you (you can also pick up forms at post offices).

Generally, every year I fold up all my T4s and Schedules 1 through whatever, and charitable donation receipts, and RRSP slips and stuff them into the government's envelope then mail them away.

But this year, something called Tele-file caught my eye.

Yes, if you've never tried it before, you can use a touch-tone phone to file your taxes.

You still have to fill out the paper forms first, but then the automated system walks you though your return, asking you to input amounts from various lines on the forms.

It took me half an hour on the phone, to go through the menus, etc., but I probably would have spent about that amount of time driving to a post office to buy a stamp and mailing the return away.

And, although I got a little frustrated at the continual "You have entered .... is this correct? Press '1' for 'Yes' and '0' for 'No'" that was repeated ad naseum, it wasn't too onerous.

So why can't I do this online?

Sure, the government offers a Netfile system as well, but it's not the same as the phone system. To file your taxes online, you have to upload a special .tax file to their server, and the special file has to be prepared by a commerical product.

(You can also have your accountant send it in, using a different system, called e-file.)

Most of the commercial products (software like TurboTax or Ufile) offer a free version — if you fall under a certain income threshold. For example, if you made less than $25,000, it'd be free to use. If you made more, sorry, cough up the dough to buy the program before you're able to file your taxes.

Although I'm pretty sure I deserve a hefty raise, I don't make little enough here that I qualified for any of those programs.

In fact, the only program that I could find where I could qualify was called Studio Tax, and it appears to be free for all users.

Now, I didn't use this program to file my taxes, and this isn't an endorsement, but at a first glance, it looks pretty swell.

In fact, I'm a little peeved that I didn't notice it earlier. My only quibble with it is that it is a Windows-only program. Sorry, Mac users.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's the responsibility of the private sector to come up with ways to file your taxes. If the people who donate their time to updating Studio Tax every year decide to do other things, that program will disappear.

What I really want is for the Canada Revenue Agency to step up.

They've already got a great framework for filing taxes through the phone. It's a directed questionnaire that would port well to the internet, as a web application. Instead of punching in numbers on my phone, I could punch them in on the screen.

If they are worried about securing the data, I would think that's a solvable problem. People are already mailed out a four-digit code that they're required to use for filing taxes -- surely that, paired with the Social Insurance Number, should be enough to weed out fakes.

The phone system only gives you a certain number of chances before it locks you out -- the internet system could do this, too.

For people who have complex tax situations, it might not work. But for people whose situations are similar to mine, a quick web application to input our tax situation should be easy to code.

In the meantime, though, if you're sitting around with your taxes done, and you were just waiting around until you remembered to run out to get a stamp and mail them, why not try phoning it in?

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