T1 General Software for All Canadian Residents
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Taxman 2014
Version 1.5 Ready!
It's a bit late in the game but CRA has "corrected" the Manitoba tax credits form (MB 479). For those who have already filed, I guess they'll figure it out somehow (the changes revolve around the Seniors' School Tax Rebate received). For details on all the versions, see below at Bugs and Version History.
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Those who used to manually set CPP at Line 308 are now finding that the program keeps changing it on them. That's because they haven't filled in Schedule 8 and, if Schedule 8 is not filled in, that means they haven't Filled in the Worksheet.
This year more than ever, Fill in the Worksheet. I received a nice letter from a guy who said he's "not good at reading instructions" and that he "stumbled around for a while" then finally read enough of the instructions to realize that what should have been done first is Fill in the Worksheet. By his reckoning, if he had first Filled in the Worksheet and then Schedule 4: "I would have been pretty well finished, what a saving that would have been." He then suggested I add a warning to the program to send people to the Worksheet, since probably no one else is reading the instructions either.
Every year I get emails from people who haven't Filled in the Worksheet and every year I try to think of some way to get people over to the Worksheet. And no matter what I come up with, it always ends up as a nuisance to all the good folks who know you have to first Fill in the Worksheet. Meanwhile, the lazy guys get led by the hand. Wouldn't adding a warning be reinforcing bad behaviour? Wouldn't I be just leading people up the wrong path, pretending you can do a tax return without reading anything?
In the end I never put in a warning, which probably costs me many customers. But that letter I received makes it all worthwhile. Some would say the light went on for him, but in actual fact that was reinforcement hitting. The work was reading one page of instructions and the reward was having the tax return wham-bam done. And he felt happiness. That's what you call "operant conditioning." Or as B.F. Skinner puts it: "Happiness is the contingency between work and reward." (Oh ya, I went to university!)
Note here that the work done was intrinsically rewarding, and within the whole process learning took place. And it all came about because I stuck to my guns and didn't give in to the slothful. There's some reinforcement for me too!
Taxman delivering to Canadians epiphanies and happiness, one taxpayer at a time! It's all part of the job.
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Before mailing in that tax return, just to be safe, come back and download the latest upgrade.
Taxman 2014 only comes as an Upgrade so you must already have the full Taxman installed on your computer (any year's full version makes all upgrades work).
 Taxman2014 Upgrade Version 1.5 (14setup5.exe, 1.8 MB)
Revised Jan 13, 2017 — I added some improvements to the 2015 program and I thought I'd add them to the 2014 edition too.
Clicking the link below takes you to Google Drive where you have to press the 'Download' button. You then go to a page telling you the file can't be scanned for viruses — press 'Download anyway'. Then a pop-up appears and you hit 'Save File'.
Download Upgrade Version 1.5
from Google Drive!
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The sound files are huge and so have been separated out into their own install program. These are the same sounds as last year, so if you already did the download then all you have to do is copy the sounds into the Taxman2014 folder.
If you want the complete and total mystery tour, click below:
Taxman Sounds Version 10 (sounds10.exe, 5.2 MB)
Download Sounds Version 10 Now!
Pressing Download gets you the option of saving or opening the file — you want to save it.
After downloading, double-click sounds10.exe to install and be sure to change the destination folder to Taxman2014. When you open up Taxman, press Tools on the menu and then click at Sound on/off to turn the sound on.
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 New for 2014
The application for the GST credit has disappeared from Page 1. Now you're automatically applying and the first spouse to be processed will receive the credit (make sure spouse's info on Page 1 is filled in).
Page 1 now has a place for your email address. If you're silly enough to fill it in, you will be registering for online mail with Big Brother. This means you will be notified, via email, that there is mail at cra.gc.ca/myaccount for your perusal. This is the same government that is making it harder for businesses to email their clients, and you can't email CRA your tax return or a question, but they want you on their mailing list! Pretty cheeky I think. Surely if these guys want to get a hold of you, they need to give you a piece of paper (which you will need for your records). And the postal workers need the business too.
Schedule 1-A, Harper's Family Tax Cut, is a special gift to spouses in different tax brackets with a child under 18 at year-end. If you fit the criteria (which in my life never happened), you can lower federal tax payable by up to $2,000. This should buy the Conservatives a lot of votes; but even more people, not understanding about the different tax brackets, will fill out the schedule only to find they get nothing. Admittedly most of these folks will be the working-poor and they don't vote, so who cares? But Trudeau is real cute and he's promising to legalize pot, so the peasants may get off the couch this time and we could have a real horse race. And all Harper needs is a third of the votes to win. It dumbfounds me that the Left, which is all about everybody getting along and sharing, can't unite into one party and put an end to the Conservatives for the rest of history. It is within their power to do so and yet they cannot. And the reasons are pride and vanity. Surely Pope Francis would say: Throw away your past, your brand, your dreams to be the man on the throne and come together under one roof. Disdain fame and fortune and let the meek finally inherit the earth. But no, instead it's better to argue over the best day-care policy — ignoring the fact that Harper is leading us all off on a merry jihad. Wouldn't the NDP do more for the common man by joining with the Liberals, murdering off the Conservatives, and then, with the help of their new like-minded liberal-thinking friends, go about reshaping the world? It's not like I'm coming up with something new here, this happens to be the plot of most action films. Genghis Khan used the same plan 800 years ago to conquer most of Asia. Other than the vanity of being in front of the cameras, what do they have to lose?
Back to Schedule 1-A — on my form you have to put an "X" in the box beside Are you applying for the family tax cut? for the credit to show on Schedule 1. Then just press the button to bring in the spouse's info and that should be it. Every time you update your return with the spouse's info, Schedule 1-A will be updated too. If you manually enter in the spouse's data, you must enter a value for the spouse's taxable income, even if it's only a zero. And, different from CRA's form, there's a place to enter the spouse's base amount for Line 303, which is line 1 at the top of your spouse's Schedule 5. For everyone except some immigrants, that should be the yearly max allowed, which can be entered by double-clicking the control.
Schedule 6 is the same as last year's except at line 5 you now have to exclude self-employed income from a "communal organization." I have yet to find a definition for what a "communal organization" is and my program doesn't have a place to enter income from one of them. So, if this affects you, you have to override the control by pressing F5 and then you can enter the right number. Note that line 5 is not in bold print and so is not a data-entry point for CRA. They won't enter line 5 into their computer, so how do they know if we're lying or not?
Schedule 8 now figures out CPP contributions and overpayment for everyone, not just the self-employed. For most people, if you fill in the Worksheet, the program will complete Schedule 8 for you, no problems. It's only those making additional contributions, or the self-employed making an election or from Quebec, that have to work through Schedule 8. But almost everyone will now have to print Schedule 8 and add it to their return. Different from CRA's form, I have a box to tick to indicate that on a previous year's Schedule 8 you elected to stop contributing to the CPP on self-employed income.
Other than the children's fitness amount going up to $1,000 (and not the arts amount), the rest of CRA's changes are for the rarest of taxpayers and need not be mentioned.
 Bugs and Version History
- Version 1.5 has been revised with CRA's "corrected" Manitoba tax credits form (MB 479). The changes revolve around the Seniors' School Tax Rebate received. Version 1.5 also contains the revision to Version 1.4 where, if you press the button on Schedule 1-A and spouse's taxable income is zero, then Line 497 will no longer be blank but will read "0.00" instead.
- Version 1.4 no longer warns you that the refundable medical supplement is possible if you don't meet its minimum-income requirement.
- When I revised the non-QC Schedule 8, I moved the old label out of the way and then forgot about it. Version 1.3 deletes that label.
- Safety deposit boxes are no longer a deduction. Version 1.2 replaces on Schedule 4 the words "Safety deposit box" with "Management fees". This may cause some confusion when you run Missing from Schedule 4? — but you should be able to figure it out.
- CRA's internet version of Schedule 8 wasn't doing the math right. Version 1.1 contains a revised Schedule 8.
- To accommodate Schedule 1-A, I changed around the Spouse Info form and now, instead of putting a zero at every line, the program leaves them blank. Unfortunately this means, when you run Missing from T1 General? you'll get all the zero-valued spouse stuff from last year. I could write a whole bunch of code to solve the problem, but I think I'll go for the simple solution instead. Accordingly, ignore these irrelevant entries and wait until next year when the problem disappears.
George Harrison's Taxman tells how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
But with my Taxman
You get the whole darn thing for free
'Cause I'm the Taxman ... And I'm working for no one but you!
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