TaxCalc Standard 2007

It's that time of year; the nights close in, the heating is back on and the nation breathes a collective sigh as tax-filing time approaches. Acorah Software's TaxCalc is designed not only to smooth the process of online tax submission, but also to save you money.

TaxCalc Standard allows you to create and electronically submit up to six SA100 returns, as well as supplementary pages and an R40 Claim for Repayment. But there are several other versions, including one aimed at accountants, and a Lite version if you earn less than £30,000.

Once you've set up TaxCalc - if you haven't submitted a return online before, you'll first need electronic registration information from the Inland Revenue - you can work through your return in one of two ways. A Forms mode accurately reproduces the format of the paper tax return, while a SimpleStep mode intelligently hides or displays entries according to the contents of other fields, making navigation simpler. You can instantly switch between modes in the program's toolbar, and a navigation pane on the left shows how far you've got through your return.

TaxCalc offers extras you won't find in the Revenue's own merely adequate web submission software. For example, you can mark figures you're unsure of as provisional and later view these together in their own window with links back to the original entries. Coupled with a drop-down field at the top of the window that gives a view of your current tax liability, this could work as a basic "what if" analysis, too.

TaxCalc 2007 also lets you import information from TaxCalc 2006. The obvious use is to re-enter standard recurring business information, but it also enters last year's figures in a Notes field next to current entries, displaying the difference between them.

As well as the ability to lock or password-protect returns, we liked the way you can also submit a test file as a dry run to ensure that the program and the Revenue's site are speaking to each other. But the best value in the program isn't given nearly enough prominence: the clutch of tax tips buried in TaxCalc's Help file. Some of these could more than recoup the program's purchase price in themselves.

Author: Tom Gorham