Do i need to upgrade from Q2005 to do my taxes for 2006?!

Posted by jasonmolinari on January 6, 2007, 6:41 pm

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It seems that the tax planner in Quicken 2005 only lets me choose tax
year 2004 and 2005, and not 2006..i'm trying to export my tax data to
turbotax, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Do i really need to buy quicken every year to be able to look at my
current tax year??! That seems crazy.

jason

Posted by R. C. White on January 6, 2007, 9:25 pm

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Hi, Jason.

Tax planning and tax return preparation are not the same thing.

Accounting principles are not the same thing as tax laws and rules.

Accounting principles have been developed by professional accountants over
centuries, based on logic, reason and pragmatism. These principles change
and evolve slowly, deliberately, so that an accounting program can continue
to be used for several years, probably decades. Many of the users who post
here report that they are still happily using Quicken 2000 or earlier. Tax
laws are written by our Congress in Washington, based on political
considerations that sway back and forth with the seasons and the latest -
and next - election. The laws they pass are explained by bureaucrats and
interpreted by judges. They can change several times within a single year
and are almost guaranteed to change at least annually. Therefore, tax forms
for 2005 cannot be used for 2006 - and a tax program designed to prepare a
return for 2005 can't be used for a 2006 return.

A 2006 tax planner based on 2005 - or 2004! - rules would almost certainly
get us in trouble. Even if income and deductions in 2006 were exactly the
same as for 2005, the amount of tax probably would be different. And all
the planning decisions based on that input would be highly suspect. As I
recall from years when I used the Deluxe or higher versions. only the
current and one following year are usually provided for in the Quicken Tax
Planner. I can't guess what will be deductible for tax year 2008; can you?
We can't expect Intuit's programmers to predict the moods of Congress for
more than one year, either. :>(

Personally, I have the latest Q2007 and TT2006, but only the Basic versions.
The last time I tried, a week or so ago, TT would not import the 2006
Quicken data directly. I had to export from Q2007 to a .TXF file and then
import that into TT2006. I'm not sure if this was because I'm using Basic,
or because Intuit hasn't finished programming for the direct transfer, or
because the blurbs on the boxes and in the Help file are wrong.

We should be able to export our tax facts for 2006 from any recent version
of Quicken to TurboTax 2006, provided we've done a good job of assigning tax
form line numbers in Quicken. But that is not the same thing as using the
Tax Planner within Quicken 2005 to plan for 2006 taxes. Remember that Q2005
came out in the Summer of 2004, a full 2 1/2 years before last week, when
Congress went home without finalizing some of the rules for 2006.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista Ultimate x64)

> It seems that the tax planner in Quicken 2005 only lets me choose tax

> year 2004 and 2005, and not 2006..i'm trying to export my tax data to

> turbotax, but it doesn't seem to be working.

> Do i really need to buy quicken every year to be able to look at my

> current tax year??! That seems crazy.

> jason

Posted by William Glenn on January 7, 2007, 12:17 am

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R. C. White wrote:

> Hi, Jason.

> Tax planning and tax return preparation are not the same thing.

> Accounting principles are not the same thing as tax laws and rules.

> Accounting principles have been developed by professional accountants

> over centuries, based on logic, reason and pragmatism. These principles

> change and evolve slowly, deliberately, so that an accounting program

> can continue to be used for several years, probably decades. Many of

> the users who post here report that they are still happily using Quicken

> 2000 or earlier. Tax laws are written by our Congress in Washington,

> based on political considerations that sway back and forth with the

> seasons and the latest - and next - election. The laws they pass are

> explained by bureaucrats and interpreted by judges. They can change

> several times within a single year and are almost guaranteed to change

> at least annually. Therefore, tax forms for 2005 cannot be used for

> 2006 - and a tax program designed to prepare a return for 2005 can't be

> used for a 2006 return.

> A 2006 tax planner based on 2005 - or 2004! - rules would almost

> certainly get us in trouble. Even if income and deductions in 2006 were

> exactly the same as for 2005, the amount of tax probably would be

> different. And all the planning decisions based on that input would be

> highly suspect. As I recall from years when I used the Deluxe or higher

> versions. only the current and one following year are usually provided

> for in the Quicken Tax Planner. I can't guess what will be deductible

> for tax year 2008; can you? We can't expect Intuit's programmers to

> predict the moods of Congress for more than one year, either. :>(

> Personally, I have the latest Q2007 and TT2006, but only the Basic

> versions. The last time I tried, a week or so ago, TT would not import

> the 2006 Quicken data directly. I had to export from Q2007 to a .TXF

> file and then import that into TT2006. I'm not sure if this was because

> I'm using Basic, or because Intuit hasn't finished programming for the

> direct transfer, or because the blurbs on the boxes and in the Help file

> are wrong.

> We should be able to export our tax facts for 2006 from any recent

> version of Quicken to TurboTax 2006, provided we've done a good job of

> assigning tax form line numbers in Quicken. But that is not the same

> thing as using the Tax Planner within Quicken 2005 to plan for 2006

> taxes. Remember that Q2005 came out in the Summer of 2004, a full 2 1/2

> years before last week, when Congress went home without finalizing some

> of the rules for 2006.

> RC

Good answer. *But* Quicken is billed as more than just an accounting
program and I have always felt that Quicken should be able to keep the
tax planning part of the software current for at least the life of the
program. It seems to me that most of the "planning" is really just
application of tax table rates anyway. And Quicken can keep the planner
current by year, because they have changed the planner part of the
software when the tax laws have changed mid-year for a year it does support.

Posted by jasonmolinari on January 7, 2007, 11:14 am

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Thanks RC. I think i mis-typed. I really just want to use quicken to
export the data for stuff like interest income, dividends, stock sales,
automatically into Turbotax for the web, just like i did last year.
I'm not interested in tax planning in quicken. Do i need to upgrade
version to export the tax data automatically (as i've done before) into
turbo tax?

R. C. White wrote:

> Hi, Jason.

> Tax planning and tax return preparation are not the same thing.

> Accounting principles are not the same thing as tax laws and rules.

> Accounting principles have been developed by professional accountants over

> centuries, based on logic, reason and pragmatism. These principles change

> and evolve slowly, deliberately, so that an accounting program can continue

> to be used for several years, probably decades. Many of the users who post

> here report that they are still happily using Quicken 2000 or earlier. Tax

> laws are written by our Congress in Washington, based on political

> considerations that sway back and forth with the seasons and the latest -

> and next - election. The laws they pass are explained by bureaucrats and

> interpreted by judges. They can change several times within a single year

> and are almost guaranteed to change at least annually. Therefore, tax forms

> for 2005 cannot be used for 2006 - and a tax program designed to prepare a

> return for 2005 can't be used for a 2006 return.

> A 2006 tax planner based on 2005 - or 2004! - rules would almost certainly

> get us in trouble. Even if income and deductions in 2006 were exactly the

> same as for 2005, the amount of tax probably would be different. And all

> the planning decisions based on that input would be highly suspect. As I

> recall from years when I used the Deluxe or higher versions. only the

> current and one following year are usually provided for in the Quicken Tax

> Planner. I can't guess what will be deductible for tax year 2008; can you?

> We can't expect Intuit's programmers to predict the moods of Congress for

> more than one year, either. :>(

> Personally, I have the latest Q2007 and TT2006, but only the Basic versions.

> The last time I tried, a week or so ago, TT would not import the 2006

> Quicken data directly. I had to export from Q2007 to a .TXF file and then

> import that into TT2006. I'm not sure if this was because I'm using Basic,

> or because Intuit hasn't finished programming for the direct transfer, or

> because the blurbs on the boxes and in the Help file are wrong.

> We should be able to export our tax facts for 2006 from any recent version

> of Quicken to TurboTax 2006, provided we've done a good job of assigning tax

> form line numbers in Quicken. But that is not the same thing as using the

> Tax Planner within Quicken 2005 to plan for 2006 taxes. Remember that Q2005

> came out in the Summer of 2004, a full 2 1/2 years before last week, when

> Congress went home without finalizing some of the rules for 2006.

> RC

> --

Posted by R. C. White on January 7, 2007, 1:37 pm

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Hi, Jason.

Oh. Nevermind! (Quoting someone that I've often heard about but didn't
really watch when she was on TV.) ;^}

Exporting to TurboTax is fairly straightforward, as opposed to the tax
planning that I was talking about.

Yes, as I said (finally!) in my earlier post

>> We should be able to export our tax facts for 2006 from any recent

>> version

>> of Quicken to TurboTax 2006, provided we've done a good job of assigning

>> tax

>> form line numbers in Quicken.

The last time I tried to import 2006 data from Q2007 into TT 2006 (about a
week ago), it didn't work. But, just now, I tried it again and it seemed to
work, although I haven't looked yet to see just what got imported. Since I
no longer have Q2005 or earlier installed, I can't test for sure, but I
believe that TT2006 will import 2006 data from any recent version of
Quicken.

How recent? I don't know. But I suspect that if you have 2006 entries in
Q2003, for example, and have properly coded the tax form line numbers, then
TT2006 will import them. Of course, you'll have to run TT2006 and start
your 2006 return (probably by importing your name, etc., from your TT2005
data file), then click File | Import and Browse to your Q2003 data file.

Let us know how this works out for you. I'm sure others are wondering, too.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista Ultimate x64)

> Thanks RC. I think i mis-typed. I really just want to use quicken to

> export the data for stuff like interest income, dividends, stock sales,

> automatically into Turbotax for the web, just like i did last year.

> I'm not interested in tax planning in quicken. Do i need to upgrade

> version to export the tax data automatically (as i've done before) into

> turbo tax?

> R. C. White wrote:

>> Hi, Jason.

>> Tax planning and tax return preparation are not the same thing.

>> Accounting principles are not the same thing as tax laws and rules.

>> Accounting principles have been developed by professional accountants

>> over

>> centuries, based on logic, reason and pragmatism. These principles

>> change

>> and evolve slowly, deliberately, so that an accounting program can

>> continue

>> to be used for several years, probably decades. Many of the users who

>> post

>> here report that they are still happily using Quicken 2000 or earlier.

>> Tax

>> laws are written by our Congress in Washington, based on political

>> considerations that sway back and forth with the seasons and the latest -

>> and next - election. The laws they pass are explained by bureaucrats and

>> interpreted by judges. They can change several times within a single

>> year

>> and are almost guaranteed to change at least annually. Therefore, tax

>> forms

>> for 2005 cannot be used for 2006 - and a tax program designed to prepare

>> a

>> return for 2005 can't be used for a 2006 return.

>> A 2006 tax planner based on 2005 - or 2004! - rules would almost

>> certainly

>> get us in trouble. Even if income and deductions in 2006 were exactly

>> the

>> same as for 2005, the amount of tax probably would be different. And all

>> the planning decisions based on that input would be highly suspect. As I

>> recall from years when I used the Deluxe or higher versions. only the

>> current and one following year are usually provided for in the Quicken

>> Tax

>> Planner. I can't guess what will be deductible for tax year 2008; can

>> you?

>> We can't expect Intuit's programmers to predict the moods of Congress for

>> more than one year, either. :>(

>> Personally, I have the latest Q2007 and TT2006, but only the Basic

>> versions.

>> The last time I tried, a week or so ago, TT would not import the 2006

>> Quicken data directly. I had to export from Q2007 to a .TXF file and

>> then

>> import that into TT2006. I'm not sure if this was because I'm using

>> Basic,

>> or because Intuit hasn't finished programming for the direct transfer, or

>> because the blurbs on the boxes and in the Help file are wrong.

>> We should be able to export our tax facts for 2006 from any recent

>> version

>> of Quicken to TurboTax 2006, provided we've done a good job of assigning

>> tax

>> form line numbers in Quicken. But that is not the same thing as using

>> the

>> Tax Planner within Quicken 2005 to plan for 2006 taxes. Remember that

>> Q2005

>> came out in the Summer of 2004, a full 2 1/2 years before last week, when

>> Congress went home without finalizing some of the rules for 2006.

>> RC

>> --