#TAX TIME, are U ready?
5 messages in this thread
It is again time to settle up with Uncle Sam, Yes TAX TIME! In an effort
to make this experance as plesent and inexpensive as possible I have taken
special effort to use Phasar throughout 1991. Designed it specifically
with Tax Filing in mind. I have Rental Income and Depreciating Assets
along with other fun things that complicate the whole process. In prior
years I have paid up to $150.00 to have a Tax Prepairer take the numbers I
gave him (through Phasar), calulate the proper depreciation and plug all
the numbers into the right blanks.
I have read the Tax related articles in Feb, 92 issues of Amiga World and
Compuserve Magazine with great interest. Andrew Tobias' TaxCut and
TurboTax Personal/1040 sound like they will do the job with no problem,
alas they will only work on IBM/Clones. However Amiga World indicated a
couple of programs that comes close to doing the job, Data-Tax and Phasar!
Phasar only comes with a facsimile of the 1040 and Schedule A. No help
calculating Depreciation or other forms. Much is left for the user to do.
Data-Tax is reported to be a glorified spreadsheet which will recalc the
forms once you have filled in all the blanks. And according to the
article, no help with calculating depreciation either. Unless you look at
the ad for Data-Tax further back in the magazine. Then if you look closely
at the picture of Data-Tax's main screen in the ad, you will see a
Depreciation Worksheet button. Evidently the article is not too accurate.
What I would like to know is, if anyone has or has used Data-Tax. What can
or can't it do. I would prefer to do my taxes on the Amiga, but if the
software is not up to speed yet I sure don't want to waste my money just to
go buy a MS-DOS Tax program or hire a Tax prepairer again.
David Dette
– via Whap!
I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have not seen any personal finance
software on the Amiga that comes close to the power and value-for-money of
the MS-DOS stuff. I used Money Mentor for two years and it's not a bad
little program. Reviews I've read put Phasar in a slight lead but
certainly the same lead. Now I use Quicken on the PC. It blows MM away.
Such a pleasure to use, far more powerful in too many areas to list and
half the price. It lacks a graphing capability that MM has but that's it.
I've used no Amiga tax programs but I've used Tobias' TaxCut and Parson's
Personal Tax Edge for MS-DOS. Both are very powerful with every form you
can imagine. Both have an "interview" mode for data entry. PTE is a bit
of a memory hog and slow but it's also cheaper. My personal pref. is for
the look and feel of TaxCut.
This dearth of business software for the Amiga is an old lament but just as
valid today. I'm resigned to it. Render unto MS-DOS that which is
MS-DOS's…. I'll let the Amiga have the divine half of this paraphrase.
🙂 — Art
I have to agree with you on the financial programs, Art. I use Quicken,
and love it. I'd LOVE to see something that easy to use and that powerful
on the Amiga. Quicken5.0 is set up to work automatically with TurboTax, so
that you can just export all tax-related data from Quicken, and then import
it into TurboTax – it even installs itself on the correct line of the tax
return! My update to 5.0 has not yet arrived, but I'm eager to get it.
TurboTax is also simple and very powerful. It has many helps – can pull up
the IRS instructions for every line on the return, has an interview, a
tutorial, questionnaire, etc. It uses a form of hypertext to move you to
deeper levels of instructions if you need them. Almost any form you could
want is right there in the program, and your computer printout is accepted
and approved by IRS, so you just print out the entire return when you are
finished – but not before you put your return through TurboTax's own audit
program which will point out almost anything that would be likely to kick
your return out of the IRS computer. If there is anything remotely like
this for the Amiga, I've not heard about it.
I'm really thankful for my Bridgeboard when it comes to keeping up with my
finances!
Betty
David, I have used Tax-Break, now DataTax, for three years. The 1990
version did everything I wanted it to do and it certainly *did* do
depreciation for real property.
I did my entire 1990 return in DataTax including form 1040, Schedules A, B,
D, and E, forms 2441, 8606, 4562, 3903. It also includes various other
forms and standard worksheets and will produce custom itemization sheets
for any tax form line item.
It does incremental recalculations and displays the +/- effect on your tax
for each change you enter. It includes a built-in calculator that will
paste results into your tax form. It produced high quality printed forms
from an Epson 24pin LQ clone printer, which I just signed and mailed. It
also provided an electronic filing service, if you want to do that.
Given the fact that it will itemize any form line, it *should* be possible
to run it all year and accumulate charitable contributions, interest,
rental property expenses, etc. as they occur. It was not designed to do
this, however. The itemization function will only add positive or negative
entries, no other arithmetic functions are supported, although with ARexx
in the update this may change.
The 1990 "help" function was modest (program oriented) and it doesn't do
any prompting. You have to know what you're doing from the tax rule point
of view. I don't know how it compares to MSDOS competition; but it's a
sound, competent program and I've ordered the update.
Rob.
I have used Data Tax, Superbase Personal (the original one) and Phasar for
my taxes last year, and Data Tax with Superbase Personal the two years
before that. The advantage of the Amiga's multitasking shows when I had
all three programs, plus my spreadsheet running at the same time. The only
problem was a cut and paste from one program to the next. I had to
manually transfer data from one program to another. For the past two
years, my wife has run her own business from home. Data tax had all the
forms I needed for filing (except the first year when they didn't have the
forms for moving). The people at Data Tax were also quite helpful when I
needed some technical help with the program. They also have an excellent
update system. Of course, I am waiting for the 92 version to arrive as I
write this.
The Phasar tax system would be more helpful if you could get a complete set
of forms from the publisher. They require that you design the complete set
yourself. I see the problem in that they do not know what your various
accounts are, but there system is too error prone for much more than
setting up a 1040A or a 1040 and Schedules A and B.
I did my taxes last year by verifying the data in Phasar against the data
in SuperBase, perhaps using the spreadsheet to do some additional
calculations, then entering the results into the appropriate box in Data
Tax. It was no more trouble then getting all the figures together then
paying H&R Block (the owners of CIS) to copy them on paper for me.
MS/DOS systems have more programs to do your taxes (and possibly better
than Data Tax), but can you call up your accounting program at the same
time to verify figures?
Bill Roberts in Ellettsville In. via Whap!