Comment by kazinator

I do my (Canadian) taxes by hand also, but not exactly.

I calculate all the fields using my homebrew software. All calculations are done there.

The software produces a report which is organized by form and field. I can go through it and just put the indicated values into the right forms.

The forms are fillable PDFs. I copy and paste most of the values.

The last few years, I had perfect results; no correction came back from the Canada Revenue Agency.

This year, that d1ckhead Justin Trudeau left us with a surprise; complications to the Canada Pension Plan. Something like a 40% of all the line items in my tax calculation are from the new CPP schedule 5. It has multiple brackets now. I had to redo that section of my system (redefine the model). That is tedious. Anything same as last year is a breeze.

I had to model a whole new form this year since I worked for two employers and overpaid EI (employment insurance). The common forms handle CPP overpayment. For EI overpayment there is no "heads up" in the workflow at all. Since there is a deduction for EI payments, you have to do it right; you can easily screw up and naively calculate and claim the overpayment, while keeping the deduction calculated from the the overpaid amount.

Anyway, when I used to work with just pen and calculator, it took me about, oh, a bit over an hour or so. 10 to 15 hours seems crazy for personal tax. Is this for a moderately complicated corporation, where you're saving money by not hiring an accountant?