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)

TurboTax 2019

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.

TurboTax - did you move

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.

TurboTax - martial status

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.

TurboTax - caregiver

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.

TurboTax - children receipts

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.

TurboTax - self employment

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!

TurboTax - T4 mobile

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.

TurboTax - satisfaction

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.

My name is Mark Seed - the founder, editor and owner of My Own Advisor. As my own DIY financial advisor, I'm looking to start semi-retirement soon, sooner than most. Find out how, what I did, and what you can learn to tailor your own financial independence path. Join the newsletter read by thousands each day, always FREE.

85 Responses to "TurboTax Canada makes tax filing easy – enter this giveaway here!"

  1. Hello Mark:
    Is this give-away for Turbo Tax Online, or the regular package? The discount code appears to be only for the online version.

    Reply
  2. Hi Mark, I’m so happy I came across your blog recently. As a recent retiree, I’m really enjoying your posts about dividend investing, it makes so much sense. Thank you!

    Reply
  3. I’m always willing to try something……if it doesn’t cost me anything. Hehe. FIRE for 3 years now, based on watching my pennies, or is that nickels now?

    Reply
  4. Hey thanks Mark – nice giveaway. We have been using turbotax for a while now and find it the best option for reporting on home business, rental income and straight up employment income. Have encountered a couple of bugs with rental income but helpline is quite good. Can’t believe it’s tax season again …I swear we just filed…

    Reply
  5. Just got my TurboTax disc in today’s mail. Been using it for years. Just the basic one works fine for the simple farming I do. The farm accountant we were using for almost a thousand bucks a year was just entering the data from my spreadsheets into a similar looking product. I figured I could do that. Haven’t looked back since. Plus I can let a couple of relatives use it as well.

    Reply
  6. My wife and I have been using TurboTax and its predecessors since 2003 and love it. It’s quite easy to use and has some great features like importing tax forms directly from CRA, importing last year’s info to this year’s return,being able to do a couple’s returns together, and some good optimization tools – pension income splitting, medical expenses, and charitable donations.

    I did a year of part time self-employment before retiring so bought the premier version at that time and have stuck with it. Not sure if we still need that level but it’s only a few bucks more as as we get the auto-renewal discount. ($67/yr)

    Both our kids and spouses have been using our version since 2007. You can share your TurboTax installation code across multiple computers and I think it allows 8 returns over $25k per license.

    Ciao
    Don

    Anyway, great stuff!!

    Reply
  7. I would love to try Turbo Tax this year. I’ve heard its quite easy to use and would save us a lot of expense. We paid several hundred dollars to have our taxes done last year.

    Reply
  8. Great Information Mark. Keep up the amazing work. Given the numbers i just saw on baby boomers and future retirement people need all the help they can get!

    Reply
  9. Thanks for doing a giveaway! I want to win because I just got married and bought a new house so this will be our first year doing taxes with these huge life events.

    Reply
  10. I used to file tax on my own until a few yrs ago, then turned everything to an accountant and was done with it! The returns last year weren’t any higher than when I filed on my own, so I’d like to go back to TurboTax this year.

    Please count me in for the giveaway.

    Reply
  11. Studio Tax is my choice, I looked at quite a few programs when I decided to do my own, and at the time I was working out of a Quebec registered firm but living in Ontario and it was the only one that had the Relieve portion as part of the system. Always got back a fair chunk after paying taxes in Quebec, also very intuitive for me. Yes I know that you pay more taxes over there.
    Still using it.
    It is free and I think it will do 20 returns .They ask for a donation and I have always donated.
    Just my 2 cents.

    Reply
    1. I also use StudioTax – very easy to use. I created an account at CRA and auto-fill my returns. I have to input a few things CRA doesn’t have but all of this makes tax time a breeze.

      Reply
  12. Another helpful post Mark. I have had a friend prepare our taxes each year for many years and he does a great job, but I am feeling kind of guilty. I am thinking I would like to take back control of the filing and have been thinking about getting a copy of Turbo Tax. I am wondering if more than one return can be made on a copy of the software and if so what is the max number and is there extra cost for each person.

    Thanks and keep on with the great blog posts.

    Reply
      1. I just checked and that is not true, Turbo Tax DOES offer a downloadable Mac Version in Canada, just not the CD version which is fine by me since most new laptops don’t even come with a CD drive anymore.

        Reply

Post Comment