It's never too early to prepare for tax season.  For some of you, you've spent the whole year organizing and marking your receipts, while most of you haven't even scratched the surface of your pile hiding away somewhere in your desk drawers (I'll admit, I'm part of that latter). So let's face it, tax season can be monotonous and, later, hectic.  Saving and organizing receipts can be tedious, but there are also many benefits.  There's nothing better than receiving a big tax return cheque followed by several GST/HST cheques throughout the year. Not only that but getting into the habit of staying up to date with your payments and avoiding procrastination is a good exercise in self-discipline and self-motivation. 

Tax time is usually not fun for anyone, even for those of us who get money back. Part of the reason for that has a lot to do with waiting to see what the amount is, and then waiting for Revenue Canada to cut a cheque. The TurboTax Refund Calculator is an easy — and free — way to find out just how much you can expect to get back.

After using Quick Cash Manager for the last year I decided to investigate the next step up in Intuit’s software line: Quicken Home & Business. Given that I started my own business last year, it seemed like the next logical step.

I really enjoy the practicality of Cash Manager; being able to download my bank and credit card info, creating my own budget, balancing my cheque book and printing my own cheques forms the base of how I use the program, but being able to keep an eye on my mortgage and forecast my cash flow are tools that have become more relevant to me as time has passed.

So let's face it, people hate doing taxes.  Even so, there are many people out there who decide to file their own income tax returns every year.  This might seem like a daunting task for some but there are a few different software out there that are intuitive enough for even your average joe -- notably TurboTax 2010.

The end of April usually means that the weather is getting better (well, at least it’s supposed to be) but we also know it as the time to file those pesky tax returns. Gone are the days of mounds of paper with numbered lines that seemingly made no sense, or paying accountants to do a job that would probably take them no more than 10 minutes. It is your money, after all, so shouldn’t you do your taxes yourself electronically?

If you're like many Canadians you've found a tax product that you feel comfortable with and you've stuck with it. For me, the big familiar QuickTax logo is a relief every year; I know what I'll be getting in the box and the type of experience I can expect on my computer. This year will be a bit different for me; I've got a brand new operating system to test out in Windows 7. Let's see how QuickTax stands up to the test...