Product Reviews

Sometime after the 5 April 1997, you may have been one of the nine million or so people who received the new Inland Revenue Self-Assessment form through your door. If you weren't one of the lucky ones, you might not be aware that the new forms are something of a shock. They comprise a standard tax form of eight pages, up to a dozen or more supplementary pages, a guide on how to fill it in and another 12-page form on how to calculate your tax due, and when to send the cheque to the tax inspector.

While the tax system itself isn't really much different from the old one, the calculation guide now allows actual tax liability to be worked out exactly, following the Inland Revenue's rules. The other main difference is that you can calculate your own tax and send a cheque with the form.

However, preparing the return is tedious and unintuitive. Two companies - Intuit and the Consumers Association - have now released aids to self-assessment, which basically give additional help over that offered in the Inland Revenue guide, by assisting with calculations and then printing out a complete tax form which only needs your signature.

The Consumers Association's offering, TaxCalc 96-97, works by conducting an interview about your tax situation. As you go through the interview, typing in details, a small Help window gives additional details about whichever field the cursor is in at the time. The Help window can lead to expanded help information, which is a little more useful than the rather terse text in the Inland Revenue leaflets. It reproduces 24 popular Inland Revenue leaflets and help sheets, and brief details on a further 80 Inland Revenue leaflets to help you decide whether you wish to get copies of them. For self-employed persons, TaxCalc deals quite well with normal businesses, including old ones with a 1996/97 tax bill based on a transition period of 24 months. It doesn't, however, handle partnerships, or businesses with losses during the transition period.

The Interview screen can be toggled on and off, so that the form can either be filled in 'ad hoc' or by following the structured dialog offered by the Interview prompts. Any part of the Help system is always available with the right mouse button.

When the tax form is completed there are several options. The first is to run the Tax Saver. This offers to examine tax returns for husband and wife, with both open on the screen at the same time, and gives advice on transferring income and allowances between partners to minimise tax liability. The simple Tax Summary is a one-page print-out of tax due, while the detailed summaries reproduce all of the Inland

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Revenue calculation sheets in full, including lump sums and capital gains, explaining how the figures are calculated. Finally, the completed tax return complete with all supplementary pages can be printed out and, if desired, a cheque for the calculated interim payment included with it.

Intuit QuickTax 97 is similar to TaxCalc, in that it offers a guided interview with both Inland Revenue and Intuit help screens, or a tabbed dialog box containing all the basic areas of the tax form. It's slightly better looking than TaxCalc though, which reflects Intuit's continuing improvements to the look and feel of its range. The help system is informative and includes the full text of 80 Inland Revenue help sheets, leaflets and calculation guides. During the interview process the screen is split so that the lower half shows the actual tax return itself, giving the freedom to mix and match entering data directly into the tax form, or through the interview process into the tabbed dialog boxes.

Further assistance is given by pop-up worksheets which can be accessed in two ways. These are offered directly in the interview or can be displayed by clicking on a small symbol to the side of any tax form field which has a worksheet attached.

These worksheets are used, for instance, to enter interest figures from several accounts and transfer only the total to the tax form, or in the case of complex matters such as capital allowances, to calculate personal and business usage as a ratio for tax purposes. Unlike TaxCalc, the final tax return can be directly edited to make any minor adjustments prior to printing it.

After you're finished, two other functions help you get an overview. The Tax Assessor summarises in one page your tax liability and stage payments. The Detailed Tax Summary reproduces all of the figures required in the Inland Revenue Tax Calculation guide, but as the field labels on the report differ from those on the Inland Revenue form, it's extremely difficult to compare the printed report with the official guide.

The version of QuickTax I looked at had a number of minor bugs, particularly with its 'smart' drop-down worksheets and in its print routines. Most of these should be fixed by the time you read this, as production of the shipped version was delayed specifically to fix late appearing problems.

Both of these apps are very similar, but differ in approach to the same problem. TaxCalc is functional, devotes little effort to unnecessary cosmetic appearances and relies on the user reading the help screen and entering correct information. It's competent and simple to use. QuickTax looks more attractive, is much more helpful and user friendly and carries out a considerable amount of analysis of the response to its questions in order to ensure accuracy of the information entered into the tax form.

In general, QuickTax is more suited to the first-time user, and TaxCalc to those with previous experience of Tax preparation programs and a reasonable working knowledge of the information required. The considerable benefit of both programs is the ability to tune your tax return for maximum benefit and prepare a print-out that can be simply signed and posted to the Inland Revenue.