If you don’t wanna read through my whole rave because you are SOOOOOOO excited to do your taxes, then please feel free to head on over to www.simpletax.ca to get started right away. Note that I am NOT in any way receiving an affiliate commission for recommending this service, although I am totally open to that!!!
I do a lot of ranting, so I thought it might be time for a rave! Let’s talk about TAX baby! [Ummm… all of my blog posts can basically be sung to the tune of Salt N Peppa’s one song. It’s a good tune! (A rave within a rave… whaaat? #doublerave).].
Let me tell you a secret that nobody who is profiting from your tax return wants you to know… doing your own taxes is easy. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t read correctly. Doing your own taxes is easy. I know, you have been led to believe that it is a massively complicated ordeal that only super-smart, over qualified accountant types could possibly have the brain power to comprehend… but if you can plug numbers into boxes, then you can save yourself a fuck-ton of time and money by doing it yourself from the comfort of your couch, with or without pants.
I discovered by accident that doing your own taxes is easy when I had to file for seven years in a row. Due to many a reason I had procrastinated at a professional level and therefore had a massive backlog to take care of. Being both broke and frugal I determined that there was no way in HELL I was paying somebody to figure out for me how much money I was going to owe the government. So, I sat down with all the the mail that I had been sent indicating it was for tax stuff, I got the paper guides at the post office, printed the required forms for each year and I set to work filling in the boxes with the appropriate numbers and then using my calculator to add those boxes as required. I will not lie, the first time was a bit of an endeavour. I had to read carefully through some stuff, use my own brain more than in an average day, and I even had to look up a few things that didn’t make sense- but all in all I discovered that the price people are willing to pay to get this done, is so not worth it, and I have been doing my own taxes ever since.
The benefit of doing my own taxes has not just saved me money but also taught me a lot about taxes, how they work, how they are calculated, and how to use deductions to my advantage. As a single person, with at times up to 3 jobs… I have come out on the losing end of tax season and ended up owing quite a bit, mostly out of ignorance. Now that I know what my income is taxed at, where the income brackets are and what they mean I can save appropriately throughout the year, or have additional tax taken off as needed to ensure I’m not incurring a big debt every March. I’ve almost gotten it down to a science with this year being the lowest I’ve had to pay on the highest amount of income I’ve received. Win/win!
In total I have been doing my own taxes for 11 years. In 2014 I joined the online revolution. But while Walmart was selling Turbo Tax for $40 bucks a pop (it is now also included on the list of free software online!), I went over to the Government of Canada’s website https://www.canada.ca/en/services/taxes.html to have a look at what they recommended. Low and behold they had several free options. I can’t honestly say what compelled me to choose SimpleTax over the other options, and I can’t speak to the quality of the other options… but I don’t need to.
SimpleTax is exactly that. Simple. It took out the need for my calculator and relieved the burden on my brain. And it’s completely free. After you’ve used it, and submitted your taxes to the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) they send you an email to ask if you would like to pay what you can, which I always do despite it not being necessary. I do it personally so that a) people who can’t afford it can continue to have a free service and b) it is a valuable service to me and it’s amazing. I am happy to contribute to its continued success.
Since 2014 when I first used it, they have continued to make improvements to the software and the process. As you fill out your return it keeps a running tab of your balance so you can see how each individual piece of the puzzle affects the overall balance, and as of last year or the year before, you can link your account to the CRA, and have much of your information, such as your RRSP contribution limit auto-filled for you.
The CRA My Account for Individuals is a fantastic online resource itself and you can use a sign-in partner, like your bank, to connect to all of your information online, such as your Notice of Assessment and your aforementioned RRSP contribution limit.
Did I mention that they also submit your return for you at the click of a button? That they optimize your return and remind you to check for things you may have missed? That they have calculators that make even declaring your own personal business expenses easy? (Assuming of course that you have saved and organized your receipts… SimpleTax is good, but they can’t come into your house and keep your shit together for you).
So friends, what are you waiting for? Head on over to www.simpletax.ca to get ‘er done. Netfile opened on February 26th… not to brag but I only know this because I finished doing mine too early to actually submit it. That reminds me. I should do that now.
Happy Taxing my friends.