TurboTax Canada continues to make tax filing easy – 2021 giveaway!
The following article is in partnership with TurboTax Canada. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Hard to believe we are here again – it’s tax season Canadians!
Thankfully, in a tax year unlike any other, TurboTax has you covered with these tips, software prompts and more to make tax filing easy.
I’ve been using TurboTax to support my personal and small home-based business needs for about a decade now, and I have no need to change.
I enjoy the clean tax preparation interface and the prompts help me ensure I get it right every year.
Now, I can appreciate doing your own taxes might be intimidating. I mean, 2020 was a wild year with so many changes for so many people.
Amongst employment changes for you or your family, maybe you got married, maybe you had a child or you had other income changes. Maybe triggered by the pandemic you became self-employed last year.
Whatever the case may be, I think TurboTax has you covered.
Don’t want to tax file alone – you can get support!
TurboTax is the only Canadian tax preparation software designed specifically for self-employed individuals – so, right there, you are covered.
But if you want to go one step further, there is help within a few clicks!
With TurboTax Live Assist & Review:
- You can ask questions and get advice about your taxes from a real tax expert,
- Your expert will review your return, and
- You can get on-demand assistance when you need it.
Should you want a more full-meal-deal for your tax filing needs, don’t worry about finding a competitor or some brick-and-mortar facility in a pandemic. Get your support online.
With TurboTax Live Full Service:
- After answering a few questions, you authorize an expert to get your tax documents directly from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA),
- An TurboTax expert will do the tax-filing lifting for you, they ensure your credits and deductions are checked, and
- After a review over the phone, before they EFILE your tax return for you, they’ll walk you through everything they have done!
Never filed your own taxes – TurboTax has a version for you!
Maybe you’re not self-employed or maybe you didn’t have any of the upcoming “life changes” I’ll profile below.
Regardless of your current life or tax situation, TurboTax has a version for you.
I personally use the online Self-Employed version – and I encourage you to enter my giveaway at the end of this post.
Now that CRA “tax season” is open, a great feature within the online versions are you can import any tax documents available directly from the CRA. This is incredible – since it saves errors and saves time!
Beyond TurboTax Live opportunities, beyond the online versions, I think overall you’ll find the series of plain-language questions refreshing knowing you’ve got your tax items confidently covered.
So, as you know above, I’m using these services to file my tax return this year.
You can too!
Thanks to my ongoing partnership with Intuit Canada, I’m ready to giveaway up to three (3) promotional codes below just for being a fan of my site.
But before you rush ahead and enter, here are some great features, support and discounts available even if you don’t win the free stuff – to help you with your tax preparation needs this year.
Did you get married?
I can appreciate even in a pandemic year, not everyone wants to put life totally on hold.
If you got married in 2020, here are a few of the tax filing benefits I can think of, including some of the things I continue to take advantage of years later myself:
- With the tax software, filing together (as a couple) is a lot easier because the shared information can be transferred between my wife and me; reducing data entry and the risk of errors to occur.
- TurboTax also maximizes my credits (including those associated with making my charitable donations throughout the year); those credits are applied for the net benefit of both of us.
For retirees or those soon-to-be who have been married for longer they can remember!
- You can claim all or part of your spouse’s or partner’s age, pension income or disability amounts if they don’t need them to reduce their taxes to zero.
- You can optimize income-splitting opportunities in retirement and transfer plans to the surviving spouse without tax consequences.
- Retired spouses or partners can split the Canada Pension Plan credits they accumulated during their working years.
Not married but in a common-law relationship as a student and withdrawing assets from your RRSP?
Yup – TurboTax has you covered for that scenario and many more.
Under the Lifelong Learning Plan, you can withdraw amounts from your RRSPs to pay for training or education for you, your spouse or common-law partner. You can transfer to your spouse or partner your unused tuition, education, and textbook amounts, if you don’t need them to reduce your taxes to zero.
Did you expand your family?
Again, life moves on, even during a pandemic.
Did you know you can claim birth-related medical expenses? You bet.
Medical expenses for the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s spouse or common-law partner, and dependent children under 18 are claimed on line 33099 of the federal tax return.
Only expenses in excess of the lesser of $2,397 for 2020 ($2,421 for 2021) or 3% of line 23600 net income can be claimed for the federal tax credit.
Reference taxtips.ca.
Did you receive any CERB?
What. A. Year.
It was trying and troubling for many families. Sadly, still is.
Thankfully, TurboTax has very relevant and detailed information for you.
What is the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)?
In a nutshell: Canada Emergency Response Benefit was created in 2020 to provide a taxable benefit of $2,000 per month, for up to 28 weeks, to qualifying individuals; workers who lose their income as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thankfully, CERB benefited many Canadians to date who:
- Lost their job, are sick, or quarantined, or taking care of someone who is sick with COVID-19,
- Working parents who had to stay home, without pay, to care for their children,
- Wage-earners, contract workers, and self-employed individuals who wouldn’t normally be eligible for employment insurance (EI), and
- Those that are still employed, but not receiving any income due to disruptions in their working situation due to COVID-19.
While formal applications for CERB ended back in September 2020, you can still apply for retroactive payments if you think you were eligible for the benefits and missed the original application date.
The folks at CRA have those details.
What does TurboTax have to do with this?
What is important (very important) to note is that CERB is a taxable benefit and CRA did not withhold taxes at source, which means that you will be taxed on the full amount. Make sure to put some of this money aside to cover those taxes that will be owed back to the government when you file your 2020 tax return.
If you had CERB income, you should receive a T4A tax slip reporting your CERB income from the 2020 tax year. You need to claim this amount when you use TurboTax.
If you were also employed in 2020, the new T4 slip will break the employment income into periods that align with any CERB payment periods. The purpose of the new T4 is to inform CRA of the CERB amount you have received while you were still working.
Are you now self-employed or did you start a small home-based business?
The pandemic might have triggered your hobby to become a new small income stream for your family.
If that was true, you can be confident that TurboTax will identify all possible self-employment deductions.
To help navigate the filing of your tax return this year, like I will, you could use the TurboTax Self-Employed version – a version that’s purposely designed for self-employed Canadians.
A reminder that’s the online version you can win below!
This software is programmed to be so smart and robust, it walks you through your taxes step-by-step to help ensure you never miss a deduction or credit. The process is thorough and consistent, whether you are a business consultant, a freelance writer, on-demand driver, or anything in between.
As a self-employed small business owner myself, there are some of the common expenses I look to deduct from my income every year, although some never happened due to the pandemic:
- Business travel (didn’t happen, sadly)
- Meals & entertainment (hardly, only up to March 2020)
- Training courses (I didn’t take any this year but they might be a consideration for you?)
- Association membership fees (definitely on my list)
- Business equipment (on my list)
- Business licenses & permits (absolutely on my list)
- Office supplies (some, but not much)
- Marketing expenses (a few to consider for sure)
- Business-at-home expenses (absolutely, including condo fees, utilities, property taxes and more!)
And, if for whatever reason you as a small business owner prefer to have an expert look over your tax return before you file it, you can always try that TurboTax Live Assist & Review approach – so a tax expert can help you on-demand to answer all your questions as you complete your return.
They continue to have an app for that
Finally, forget downloading forms. That’s old school and too time consuming.
Back again for the 2020 tax year, TurboTax Canada has a mobile version to use!
With the app, you can initiate, amend and perform any tax filing information from the comfort of your couch using your smartphone or tablet.
File with confidence once again, enter my giveaway below!
Thanks to the user-friendly interface, the embedded prompts and guidance within the cloud-based version I will use again this year, I have full confidence with my online version I won’t leave any stone unturned when I file my taxes.
The step-by-step tax filing process almost guarantees I won’t make a mistake and ensures I can file my taxes securely.
Enter the TurboTax giveaway!
Like I mentioned above, just for being a fan of My Own Advisor I can offer you the following discount to every single reader even if you don’t win the giveaway!
I will draw three (3) Canadian resident names at random and that’s it – that’s how you can win!
Good luck and thanks for your readership!
Disclosure: Images above provided by Intuit Canada. All thoughts and opinions are my own. All tax-related information deemed current at time of writing. My Own Advisor is not a tax expert.
The posts on stocks is interesting. It’s something I’d like to get into more a few years from now.
Stay tuned for the next post!
Here’s hoping to win.. love reading your blog and save the forty bucks on TurboTax!
I hope I can do it for you Sean – good luck – drawing names tomorrow morning and contacting winners then who have a day or so to confirm they want it 🙂
Cheers.
Hi Mark, I use TurboTax every year, and it’s a good tool, but in using it this year I cannot find where to enter the “work at home” due to COVID credit ($2/day to a max of $400). Other folks are posting similar question on the Turbotax help site, but it’s not getting answered. Can you help?
It should be a simple prompt Alan. Odd. I know if came up for me but I also used the Self-Employed version this year. Not sure that matters?
Hummm, try this?
https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/do-you-know-you-can-claim-400-in-expenses-if-you-worked-from-home-due-to-covid-19-12051
Alternatively, check form T777 in the software?
I enjoy reading tips from other people as well, like when you had a guest for the post “Tax tips every Canadian should know”.
Would love to win a copy of Turbo Tax! I have used it for many years. Thanks very much for all your articles – they are very informative and helpful!
Good luck Kim!!
Using TurboTax for many years and never had any issues with it.
Good luck Ig!
I like the Then and Now posts since it’s good to reflect on past decisions.
Thanks Linda! Glad you enjoyed them and hope to do a few more in the future!
I like that your blog posts make financial topics very easy to understand for someone like me who’s intimidated by them.
Thanks Linda, glad you enjoy the content!
I look for and appreciate the tax tips the most.
turbo tax is good product
Good luck and great to hear!
I want to win because…Both my daughter and wife started at home businesses, TreasureThese and CreativeByMiranda. Guess who does these taxes returns. So after ten years of using the basic TurboTax return I need to upscale to the home business version. Winning this will be very appreciated. Thanks!
Good luck John! Thanks for being a fan.
When are you announcing the winners? I’m ready to file my taxes!
Later this month – I have the codes, just need the contest to close in about 2 weeks!
I’ve been using TurboTax Desktop for years. I switched to the online version this year – but have to admit I miss the Forms view from the desktop version! Guess I have to get used to the interview style.
Ya, I don’t mind the interview style and you do get used to it Mike. Thanks for being a fan and good luck!
When are you drawing for the Turbotax giveaway? I wouldn’t want to buy it, and then find out I’ve also won. Also, I can’t seem to find the link for the 15 % discount.
Thanks GF. You have to sign up using my 15% off banner – no need to checkout yet if you don’t want to.
I’m drawing the winners in about 3 weeks!
Love your blog and especially tax tips.
Awesome, stay tuned, more coming from a tax expert I hope in the coming weeks!
This year I broke from Turbo and used Wealthsimple, they have a pay what you want model. Seemed to work fine for me.
Good stuff Edward. I haven’t tried Wealthsimple Tax / SimpleTax yet but seems like an interesting model!
I want to win because Turbo Tax is a great product and I could use the help considering this anormal year.
Good luck Linda!
Thanks for the opportunity to win this prize, Mark and Turbo Tax Canada! I want to win because it will save me money on tax preparation services. The money I save can then be used to purchase more investments for retirement savings.
Good luck Curtis – you can always use my 15% code – start your return process and see if you like it.
I like your call about saving some money for retirement purposes. Every bit counts in the early years to add to the pile in latter years!
I would like to win as this would be my first year using turbo tax. I like the fact i can request to delete my returns for privacy reasons if i choose.
You can Christina and you can play with the software and see the prompts before you buy which I think is very smart on TurboTax – try before you buy per se.
Good luck! 🙂
I want to win because I’ve been filing with TurboTax for awhile and love their program. Love to save on tax submissions this year 😉
Great and good luck Jackie!
I would like to win because TurboTax is a nice program that I trust and like to use. Thanks
Nice to hear Josh! Good luck!
Turbo tax sounds simple compared to doing it in your own headache, especially with all the prompts .. I’d love to give it a try.
I think you can always try my 15% route first, then try it out before you file for free. You only pay when ready to file. Good luck!
Would like to learn more about retirement, it’s coming soon…I just need to know we are on the right path.
I’ve used Turbo Tax before, it is easy to use.
Yes, I find the interface great Joyce.
Good to know about retirement and the right path – will work on 🙂
Mark
Thank you Mark for putting this together. I have been using TurboTax for the last seven years to file my taxes in US and now in Canada. It is one of the most user-friendly applications and live assist is great.
Yes, I think they do a great job overall with the interface. Kudos to the design team and I’ve told the management team that too.
Good luck!!
I enter every year, perhaps this year will be lucky. As a family we use Turbotax and we like the convenience of carry over information and knowing the question format to complete our returns. One year when our tax return was somewhat more complicated we also opted in for the Audit Defense feature. Luckily, we didn’t have a need for it.
It’s a good feature and it can buy some piece of mind for sure. Our tax system is a mess so I feel it’s nice to have the prompts with TurboTax to guide me – even though I’ve been doing my own taxes for about 20 years.
Lol, I love free, so Turbotax is for me. Did the wife’s, her sons return and a trial copy of mine. As I’m moving away from the family friend accountant I’m testing my own ability against his this year via Turbotax. If Im within a couple of bucks I think I’ll tackle my own mess next year. I love the feature where you can get a 2021 Notice of Assessment immediately after filing with the connection to CRA. Planning starts right away for next year. Question: was I the only idiot that opened 2019 version, filled in all my tax return and submitted only to then read the error message that you must have the new Turbotax version installed otherwise Efile wont work. Here I was thinking the software would update itself. LOL.
“I love the feature where you can get a 2021 Notice of Assessment immediately after filing with the connection to CRA.”
Same, pretty cool.
I think by default it opens the most recent year you’ve completed with them – that makes sense – but then you need to click a button to start a new 2020 return.
Good luck Jeff! 🙂
I bought turbo tax each year for filing tax. Hope I could get lucky and don’t need to pay for it this year.
Good luck to you May!! At least you get 15% off worse case if you want to use it!
Mark
Hi, I am fairly new to your site. Am I missing something? I don’t see the discount code published anywhere.
Thanks – Melissa
Sorry, there is a 15% discount when you select the banner ad and links you to TurboTax.
Happy tax season and thanks for visiting!
I’ve used Turbo Tax for more than 20 years, and the Self-Employed version for as long as they have had it.
It’s easy-to-understand and saves me lots of time. It’s even more powerful when you use it a second year because, if you choose to do so, it populates this year’s return with relevant data from last year’s.
I remain loyal to TurboTax despite the arrival of competing software because they were first to innovate this tiresome task. That, plus their continuous improvements (eg. access CRA t-slips) have made me a repeat customer.
I like the import feature with CRA as well. As a self-employed / small business owner (the blog), there are a lot of prompts I can advantage of.
Thanks for sharing Deborah!
Mark
Personally I prefer the download version so that I can prepare returns for the whole family for one low price, rather than paying for individual returns online. Thanks for the discount code!
Welcome John – enjoy the discount and tell others 🙂
Mark
I was looking for discounts for using TurboTax this year and glad I found them on your site.
Have been using TurboTax for years and it gets better and easier to use every year, despite the fact that the tax system gets more complicated!
Great stuff Roger. 🙂
Our tax system is a mess – not the fault of TurboTax!!
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks so much for all the tax information! Filing my taxes myself for the first year because of your influence :)!
Great Karine. Give the software a try. You won’t pay until you checkout at the end and file!
Worse case, you get the play with the software.
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks for doing this giveaway! What a… unique year for taxes, eh?
Wild year for many. Good luck Daniel and take advantage of sharing the promo code with others!
I retired from being self-employed in 2019 so my taxes will be simplified this year, just OAS and investment income and the various credits that are available to seniors. I’m thinking of using Turbo Tax now that I won’t be needing my accountant to do my books. Would love to win a copy.
Thanks Mark
Good stuff and good luck John!
For some reasons, I never liked TurboTax. I have been a StudioTax since the beginning but this year used WealthSimple as I already have an account just to try it. Ended up being really simple indeed and totally free. Saved the $15 for submitting on StudioTax.
Smart stuff Mr. Dreamer. If you have a very simple return, there are alternatives and I’ve heard great things about StudioTax.
I recall TurboTax has a free version for very simple returns and there Standard online version that costs max $20 then my discount applies. 🙂
My principle is, don’t pay unless you have to 😀 I was about to actually submit with StudioTax and suck up the $15 but then tried out WealthSimple Tax. It was so easy and good that I couldn’t resist. You should try it out just for fun. You will love its simplicity and smoothness. Even StudioTax got me confused at some points and asks so many questions.
I have no clue why I am recommending them. No referral or anything pure honesty haha
BTW, I received my Federal return today. Waiting for QC return which is a big chunk (Thanks to RRSP and Remote Work)
Ha, recommend who you want! All good 🙂