Product Reviews

Now that the Inland Revenue has made self-assessment firmly a part of British financial bureaucracy, we all have to get used to filling in those nifty coloured tax forms by the end of September. Not only that, but if you leave it until the last minute to complete the return, you'll be responsible for working out your own tax - pretty important then that you get it right first time.

Of course, there are plenty of professional tax advisors out there and many folk choose a qualified accountant to help them sort out their tax return. Even then, however, the result might not be exactly what you expect. If you provide your advisor with inaccurate information or they don't ask the relevant questions, you could end up losing valuable tax relief.

One answer is to deal with the form-filling yourself, but how do you know what goes where and what sections you need or don't need to complete? Well, this is where TaxCalc comes in. Previously supplied by consumer watchdog Which?, TaxCalc is now marketed by Intuit and makes light work of computerising your tax data. In fact, if you use Quicken for your day-to-day accounts then you can import this information straight into TaxCalc with just a couple of keystrokes.

If you're completing your tax return by hand, then perhaps the easiest way to use TaxCalc is by typing into the on-screen forms using the step-by-step question-and-answer mode. Although you can choose to fill in fields on the appropriate tax returns directly, working straight onto the electronic Inland Revenue form is probably best left to the professionals. Taking the wizard-based approach also uses the intelligence built into TaxCalc to help you get the most from the software.

For example, TaxCalc asks you each question in turn, cleverly missing out those made irrelevant by your answers to previous queries. You see the interview questions at the top of the screen, with a view of where you are on the actual Inland Revenue Tax Return below if you wish. This split-screen situation works well and there's plenty of help to guide you through most situations.

Right-clicking, for example, brings up a help dialog, which

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allows you to ask questions about the field you're in at the time. It also contains some very useful tax-related information. From here you can also access a PDF of the Inland Revenue notes that accompany the tax return, or specific help sheets if these are available. You can enter memos against each section and mark it as 'provisional' if you like, which means you can come back and deal with this later when you have the information required to hand. You can also change from the interview format to a detailed tree listing of just where you are on the tax form, and in turn jump from this to the actual form itself with one click of the mouse.

Once all the relevant information has been entered into TaxCalc, you can ask the program to check the form for obvious errors and omissions. TaxCalc will scan your tax return for fields that it believes you should have completed or that contain information that doesn't seem to make sense. It will also check out errors that could cause the Inland Revenue to get back to you with additional questions; putting these right at this stage can save an audit check later on.

Finally, you can ask the software for tips on additional tax-saving possibilities and advice on how you can save more on taxes in future - all based on how you've completed the form this time round. The last stage is to check through the return and ask TaxCalc to print the document on plain paper - all the pages are accepted by the Inland Revenue as substitute forms. You can also print the worksheets you used to calculate various items as you completed the form, plus extra supporting notes you completed at the same time.

You can also see precisely how much tax you're expected to pay and exactly how the software arrived at this amount. Thankfully, TaxCalc not only understands payments on account if these need to be made, but also takes into account any payments already made and brought forward from last year's form (if you used TaxCalc to calculate your tax liability in the previous financial year).

If all is well, the tax return form can be signed and sent to the Inland Revenue. Or, even better, you can lodge the form electronically across the Internet. Before you can file over the Internet you need to get a permanent user ID, password and Activation PIN from the Inland Revenue, but once these are in place TaxCalc does the rest.

There's no doubt that Intuit TaxCalc 2004 is far better than completing the forms by hand. You can edit mistakes as often as required and see exactly how much tax you're going to pay. More importantly, you can try 'what if' scenarios and, dare I say, use a little creative backwards-compatible bookkeeping to reduce your tax bill - well worth £20 of anyone's money.