Small question for you folks. I have been using QuickTax (Impots Rapides) on the Mac for the last few years. Eventhough it was running in Classic (OS 9), it was doing a good job. But Intuit has decided to discontinue the product. They claim it is because Mac users expressed a preference in doing their tax returns online... yeah sure !
Ayway, do any of you know of other candian tax return softwares available on the Mac ?
Well, despite the negative comment (in that other thread) re TaxTron (earlier GriffTax) I have a different view. I've been using GriffTax successfully for about ten years.
This year it has become TaxTron-Mac. It is still an exclusively Classic app and has pretty much the same appearance it had years ago. So if you can't stand a slightly retro interface, you might be turned off. Don't be. TaxTron works just as GriffTax did. I've used GriffTax for both paper and (in more recent years) NetFile returns with no problems. And with the demise of that Intuit product it's the ONLY Mac Canadian tax app. It's bilingual too.
I've used Quicktax for the Mac for many years and even though it bothered me that Mac users paid more, and simply the fact that Mac users were an afterthought to them, the program worked as advertised. The point, for me, of doing my taxes on the computer is the "what if" calculations, and Quicktax made it easy and fast.
Unfortunately I did my 2003 taxes late, after Quicktax announced there would be no 2004 version and retroactively made the 2003 version unavailable. So I was stuck with Grifftax or one of the online versions.
There was an ehMac thread last spring on the online tax sites, which prompted me to check into them as a solution and I came to the conclusion that I wasn't convinced of their security. Transmitting the data using https didn't bother me, I do online banking, but how they handled your data after they had it stored on their server is what I had questions about. Emails to the different companies didn't really answer those questions for me satisfactorily. Here's the thread from last spring: Tax Time and Macs
So I got Grifftax and paid for it for 2003. Not nearly as polished as Quicktax and the UI was dreadful. I spent at least 2 full hours trying to enter a business expense in one column every way I could think of, until I realized that it just had to be a bug. Trying to override the problem to allow me to enter the figure in one spot caused the program to start randomly crashing and that was after I had rebooted my machine into OS9 to use the program. Lots of restarts, I had forgotten all about this in the world of OSX. I ended up finding a blank place in the same area that I could enter the expense and where I could make a note to whoever was reading the form at Revenue Canada that the stupid program wouldn't allow me to enter the info in the right spot.
The other big problem with Grifftax was printing. For some reason they put in several of the forms to be printed on legal size, even though Revenue Canada specifically requires that the forms be printed on letter size paper. It was impossible to print the whole return at once, because the legal size page had to be printed separately with a different setting in Page Setup to reduce it. After trying for a while to figure out how to get around this boneheaded mistake in the program, I ended up printing out the pages one at a time. There was no guide, as in Quicktax to specify what order the forms had to be in to submit the return or even what forms had to be submitted, so I took a guess based on the previous years return using Quicktax.
In my whole history of using Macs, I don't think I've ever fought with such a piece of crap software as I did with this. Badly designed, crummy UI, bugs and mistakes. Two thumbs down. Now I really know how Windows users must feel.
I downloaded TaxTron for 2004, but I'm not sure I want to even open it, if it's anything like the horror Grifftax was. I think I'll look again at filing online, to see if I can live with my security concerns. Even though I hate Intuit Canada now for dropping Quicktax for the Mac, if they're going to release an OSX version next year, as the letter hinted, I may just go back with them.
I think that the online tax services, and the fact that filing is free using them for lower income folks, probably devastated the market for programs like Quicktax. And with Mac users being even a smaller share of that market, it probably meant that there was really no economic sense in writing and supporting a Mac version.
Anyone else find it kind of pathetic that in the Google ads at the top of the thread there are multiple ads for Quicktax?
I, like others, are really annoyed at Intuit. I have used their product for 4 years and was very satisfied (actually I am not sure how others had trouble). I really like the carry forward of information. But they do not want my money anymore. But I also find it annoying that they do not respond to my emails. Actually they do respond with spam - in both languages!!!
Anyway, why not send an email to Chris Wilkinson who is the QuickTax manager that cancelled Quicktax for the Mac?
Anyone else find it kind of pathetic that in the Google ads at the top of the thread there are multiple ads for Quicktax?
I, like others, are really annoyed at Intuit. I have used their product for 4 years and was very satisfied (actually I am not sure how others had trouble). I really like the carry forward of information. But they do not want my money anymore. But I also find it annoying that they do not respond to my emails. Actually they do respond with spam - in both languages!!!
Anyway, why not send an email to Chris Wilkinson who is the QuickTax manager that cancelled Quicktax for the Mac?
Two questions: How do you happen to know that this person made this decision? Is it public info? Do you have a link?
Was this decision to cancel Quicktax for the Mac made after the following letter, posted by ehMac member CamCanola in another thread, that seemed to be promising an OSX version of Quicktax for the Mac?
CamCanola said:
Quote:
Here is the reply I got last April:
---
As a Mac user here in a sea of Windows computers, I feel your pain.
The good news is we are working on a native OS X version as we
speak.
The plan is to get it out for next year. That's not a promise, just
what is planned! As you can imagine, the vast majority of our sales
are to Windows users which means that the vast majority of our
development dollars are spent on the Windows product. In the past
we've been able to reuse a huge amount of the Windows code - which
is good because Mac users get the benefit of all the development and
quality assurance effort that goes into the Windows product. The
tools we use to effect that reuse work only in the "Classic"
environment, so we have to rewrite them to work native in OS X -
that's turned out to be quite a bit of work that needs to be done.
Regards,
-Kent M
Tax Technical Support
Intuit Canada Ltd.
---
BTW, I never had a problem with Quicktax, I've used it since '98, I think, or maybe even '97, up until the 2002 version and it always worked as advertised. I think they added too many dumb videos with folksy financial planners giving their advice, but I just ignored those.
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I've never used any software to do my taxes, only the good old fashion, pen, eraser and coffe
though, I wonder if these programs work with the Quebec way of handling and calculating the taxes ?
for those who don't know...
on a 1$ product, we add 7% for the federal gov, and on the taxed price, 1.07 we add an other 7 % for the quebec gov, which ends up being about 15.5 %.. or 1.155 $.
__________________
For every problem, there is a solution...
...if there is no solution, it means there is no problem.
I wonder if these programs work with the Quebec way of handling and calculating the taxes ?
I've seen mention of the Quebec forms on both Quicktax and Grifftax, so yes, I believe they do. Based on my personal experience I would say, stay far away from Grifftax, though.
Based on my personal experience I would say, stay far away from Grifftax, though.
I disagree based on my some ten years of personal experience using GriffTax. I suggest anyone who has problems/concerns with this app (as with just about any other) contact the developer. I found him very accessible and responsive in the past to my questions.
And, as I mentioned in my previous post, there is a new Yahoo group where users will be able to discuss TaxTron (the successor to GriffTax). The TaxTron people have said they'll be monitoring that group too. So one can hope that any queries will be dealt with knowledgeably and quickly.
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