One of the reasons that I liked StudioTax is that it allowed entering tax information directly into the forms. Admittedly, not everyone is a fan of the direct entry method. A lot of people prefer the interview method where the software asks relevant questions and generates the tax return based on the answers. If you prefer the interview method, GenuTax could be a good choice.
I downloaded a trial version of GenuTax and gave it a whirl through some basic tax scenarios – T4, RRSP contributions, Child care deductions, UCCB, Capital gains etc. It should be noted that like StudioTax, you’ll need to download additional libraries from Microsoft to install and run GenuTax. The GenuTax window is spartan and uncluttered – a left panel displays the tax summary and the right panel prompts the user to enter information for the current question. You can either click Next to go to the next question or select the question you want to jump to from a list. Once you are done, you can generate and view the tax return.
GenuTax has an interesting pricing model – a one-time payment of $34.99 plus tax includes updates for generating future tax returns. If you have a fairly simple tax situation (though GenuTax can handle most tax scenarios) or if you don’t like the direct entry method of preparing your tax return, you’ll be happy with GenuTax. Personally, I still prefer StudioTax but GenuTax would be a close second choice among the lesser-known tax preparation titles that I have tried out so far. It is nice to know that there are plenty of quality alternatives for preparing our taxes.
