Tax season is almost upon us!

[LiveWhatULove]

Have you ever tried a tax program?

No, my DH does some trading of stocks. I work in 2 different states. My DH has a small business. We have lots of deductions. Although I am sure we "could" figure it out. It's just easier this way & if we ever have to survive an audit, we'd have this support.

That does sound complicated. We have very diversified investments as well. Multi-state/province taxes could be complicated.

Here is a question for you. How and when are capital gains taxes there?

I am not the expert. Health, science, psychology is my thing. So I might sound a bit elementary here, I know we have to provide lists of all profits for the entire year, except what is in our retirement account and college savings. I remember being really upset about it one year, as my DH bought and sold all the stocks and stuff, and I didn't really understand that each one that makes a profit is taxed, it seemed crazy to me. He didn't make like a ton of money doing it, and we had to PAY the CPA a lot more because of it. It is my understanding, that if it is short-term it falls into our regular taxable income bracket after deductions and such, but if it's long term it's a flat 15%? I think...my DH is the finance, business guy, lol.

[Anonymous 4]

We do our own. I hate taxes.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

I’m using a tax attorney this year because between the figuring out if filing married filing jointly is better to filing the injured spouse crap it’s just going to be easier to let someone else do it for me.

[Anonymous 5]

We use TurboTax ours are done and filed electronically yesterday.

[Linda_Runs]

No, my DH does some trading of stocks. I work in 2 different states. My DH has a small business. We have lots of deductions. Although I am sure we "could" figure it out. It's just easier this way & if we ever have to survive an audit, we'd have this support.

That does sound complicated. We have very diversified investments as well. Multi-state/province taxes could be complicated.

Here is a question for you. How and when are capital gains taxes there?

I am not the expert. Health, science, psychology is my thing. So I might sound a bit elementary here, I know we have to provide lists of all profits for the entire year, except what is in our retirement account and college savings. I remember being really upset about it one year, as my DH bought and sold all the stocks and stuff, and I didn't really understand that each one that makes a profit is taxed, it seemed crazy to me. He didn't make like a ton of money doing it, and we had to PAY the CPA a lot more because of it. It is my understanding, that if it is short-term it falls into our regular taxable income bracket after deductions and such, but if it's long term it's a flat 15%? I think...my DH is the finance, business guy, lol.

I am not an expert either, but the programs I use are very good. My skills are in certain legal aspects. I wish I had skills like you do in health and science as they work together.

U.S. and Canadian laws are usually quite similar, but they are not even close when it comes to tax law. You have taxes we don't and we have taxes you don't. And in Canada, investment taxation is dependent on the type of investment and how it is earned. For our own investments, we are split at 75 percent Canadian, 15 percent U.S. and 10 percent foreign. But many Canadian mutuals are affected by U.S. markets too.

Some other major differences are: Canadians don't pay tax on lottery or gambling winnings; our primary residence are not subject to capital gains tax; some states, state income tax calculations are included in income tax (I think); and education and dependent taxation is different.