TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy – enter this giveaway here!

TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy – enter this giveaway here!

The following article is in partnership with TurboTax Canada. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Tax season is just around the corner friends – and this post will help you get prepared with TurboTax Canada who makes tax filing easy. 

Get tax help and support from TurboTax Canada

I used TurboTax last year and will use it again for this 2019 tax year.

You can too!

Thanks to my partnership again this year with Intuit Canada, I’m ready to giveaway 3 promotional codes to readers in the coming weeks just for being fans of my site.

But before you rush ahead and enter, here are some great features, support and discounts available (15% from me until April 30, 2020!) even if you don’t win the free stuff – to help you with your tax preparation needs this year.

(Giveaway and promotion over)

Increase your confidence by getting it right

Tax filing on your own without a good process can be both cumbersome AND very costly. TurboTax solves that problem for you (and me) by providing step-by-step guidance about any life events that have occurred over the last year – and prompts you to optimize your entries – to ensure you’re getting all the appropriate tax credits and deductions possible.

Did you move?

My wife and I did just that this year.  We moved into our condo a few months ago – a major life decision to downsize you can read about here.

Based on my success from using the software in previous years, I have full confidence TurboTax will make sure we cover all the basics and more associated with this move – such that I don’t miss out on any examples to claim.

Do you know students and employees can claim certain expenses related to their move? 100% true.

For example, full-time students who take post-secondary courses at a university, college or other educational institution can claim those if their new residence is at least 40 km closer to their school. You can deduct those expenses paid at the beginning of each school year, and when you move back after summer break or a work semester.

If fact, moving can trigger a host of potential moving expenses you can deduct:

• Transportation and storage for your household effects
• Travel costs from your old to new residence
• Accommodation, meals, & temporary living expenses near new or old residence
• Cost of cancelling the lease for your old rented residence and expenses for selling your old residence
• Expenses related to purchasing new residence
• Address change details on legal documents, replacing your driver’s license
• Utility hook-ups and disconnections, etc.

Luckily you don’t need to remember this fine print above. TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy providing step-by-step prompts that will do the heavy lifting and calculations for you.

Did you get married?

I didn’t but this is another huge life event that happened to me a decade ago, an even that can yield some significant tax benefits if it happened to you this past year.

Here are a few benefits I can think of, including some I continue to take advantage of many years on:

• 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:

• 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.

Are you supporting a spouse or a dependant in a caregiver role?

A caregiver role can be emotionally and physically taxing enough. You don’t need the financial burden to go along with it if you don’t know what you can claim this tax season.

The Canada Caregiver Credit (CCC) has some nuanced requirements but is a wonderful non-refundable tax credit designed to help Canadians in the demanding caregiver role.

The amount you can claim depends on your relationship to the person for whom you are claiming the CCC, your circumstances, the person’s net income, and whether other credits are being claimed for that person.  The amounts also change every year, so if you want to know the most current amount, forget reading our complex tax code and use the software this 2019 tax year.

Did you expand your family?

Kids can be very expensive – or so my parents have reminded me!

Did you know you can claim many medical expenses? You bet.

Canadian taxpayers can claim medical expenses that exceed the lesser of either the prescribed amount by CRA or three percent of your net income. If you have medical expenses for yourself, your spouse or common-law partner, your child, or the child of your spouse or common-law partner – make sure you follow the prompts to see if your expenses can apply. The result is used as a credit against your taxes owed!

Got child care expenses while you work or run a business? If so, you can claim child care expenses into the thousands of dollars with TurboTax software help.

Are you self-employed?

As your gig-economy or side-hobby continues to take off into an unknown future, you can at least 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 – Canada’s only tax software that’s specifically designed for self-employed Canadians.  This software is 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 landscaper, a freelance writer, on-demand driver, photographer 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:

• Business travel
• Meals & entertainment
• Training courses
• Association membership fees
• Business equipment
• Business licenses & permits
• Office supplies
• Marketing expenses
• Business-at-home expenses

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 TurboTax Live Assist and Review – 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 or any other drama this year.  Back again for 2019, TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy with a mobile version to use!

This means you can continue to initiate, amend and perform any tax filing information from the comfort of your couch using your smartphone or tablet.  The app is FREE to use from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

File with confidence and FREE if you win my giveaway below!

Plain and simple, thanks to the user-friendly interface and all the embedded prompts and guidance within the cloud-based version I will use again this year, I have full confidence I won’t leave any stone unturned when I submit my taxes for review by CRA. 

The step-by-step tax filing process almost guarantees I won’t make a mistake and ensures I can file my taxes securely.

Time to enter the TurboTax giveaway!

Like I mentioned above, TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy. So, just for being a fan of My Own Advisor I can offer you the following 15% off discount to every single reader until April 30, 2020 even if you don’t win the giveaway!

I will draw three (3) lucky Canadian resident names at random and that’s it – that’s how you can win!

Good luck and thanks for your readership!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(Giveaway over)

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.