Weekend Reading – Tax returns, tax software giveaways and great blogs

Weekend Reading – Tax returns, tax software giveaways and great blogs

This past week was busy at work, and at home.

On the home front, we submitted our tax return.  I’ve done my own taxes ever since I can remember – starting when I only had a T4 to worry about.  Things are a little more complicated now.  Beyond T4s, here are some other tax items we had to handle this year:

• Obtaining our T83s – RRSP contribution slips for 2011 and for the first 60 days of 2012.
• Obtaining our T5s from our high-interest savings account and investments – statements of investment income.
• Obtaining my T5008 – statement of securities transactions.
• Determining self-employed income and related expenses.
• Obtaining my 2011 trading summary from the discount broker.
• Obtaining our charitable donation receipts.
• Determining our property taxes paid for the 2011 calendar year.

In another couple of weeks, we should get a small refund back this year.  A small refund is better than a large one since it means we didn’t give the government much more money than necessary.  We’ve got a big mortgage to pay down over the next 10 years and investments to make for our future.  When we get our refund back, I’m leaning towards putting all of it on our mortgage.  Putting the refund back into our RRSP is also an option, although for the RRSP to “win” over the mortgage, the RRSP would have to deliver a higher rate of return than the interest rate on our mortgage (assuming our marginal tax rate stays the same over a long period).   For us, the mortgage payment is a guaranteed rate of return of just over 3%.  I’ll let you know what we do and why in a few weeks.  Maybe you have the same decision to make?

Regarding tax season, this weekend reading roundup starts with a tax software giveaway.   I also read articles this week about things you should know when applying for a mortgage, how the original couch potato feels about investing, and how savvy investors often profit from a financial crisis.  Check out these and other great articles below.

Have a safe, happy and healthy weekend.  Thanks for reading!

Financial Highway reviewed TurboTax.  It was a great review but the best part is – he’s giving away a bunch of copies!  Click here for your chance to win a daily copy of TurboTax between February 28 and March 7^th.  I use TurboTax as well and love it – very user friendly tax software.

Million Dollar Journey highlighted some scams from our modern world worth knowing about.

Retire Happy Blog had a blogpost entitled financial advisor or salesperson.  Like any profession or industry, I believe there are “good ones” and “bad ones”.  However, given the financial industry thrives on compensation and other incentives, I think some very good apples unfortunately get spoiled by many bad fruit.