Tax Time Again

I started doing my taxes today. :-) I didn't get very far before I lost interest. :-(

I'm fortunate that my business isn't very complicated so I am able to do my own taxes. However, I only ever tried filling out the tax form by hand once in 1991. I made so many simple mistakes, like transposing digits when copying numbers, that I gave up and immediately looked for a software package. I was still using the Amiga back then so I was highly doubtful that Amiga software for Canadian taxes returns existed, but to my surprised, there was a package and the local Amiga dealer had a copy in stock. It speaks volumes of the strength of the Amiga market in the early 1990s that someone actually found it worth while to produced a Canadian tax program.

Of course, by the mid 90s, it was a different story. I had to switch to Windows tax software in 1996 and doing my taxes became really annoying. Windows 95 turned me off Microsoft for good and had no computers with Windows installed, so I borrowed a laptop from a friend. Once I started using Linux for my primary deskstop system, I tried to run the Windows tax software with WINE but the installers failed abysmally in early versions of WINE. Later versions faired much better with the installers, but it was surprising how poorly the tax software worked in WINE. It wasn't WINE's fault. Seemingly simple tax software apparently used more Windows functionality than many of the games that WINE could run. Go figure!

Borrowing a Windows laptop to do my taxes continued until 2004, when I started using online tax software. I'd heard about the online software for a few years before that of course, but I waited to see who was going to stick around for the long term. Since I only ever did one return, the online software was much cheaper for me, because you paid per return. Some companies even have free returns for low income people.

My sister Jean started using Windows software for her taxes this year. For many years she had used a tax preparer, but the cost had become riduculously expensive for her simple tax return. The software was much cheaper and you could do more than one return, so I suspect she is doing her son's taxes as well.