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

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.

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.

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

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" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

according to the help in TTax06 deluxe, you can do a direct import from Q05,06, and 07. Q04 and earlier you to use a txf file, which in my experience is just one (small) step from entering it manually. Same thing for QB.

scott s. .

Hi, Scott.

Yep! That's exactly what I read, too. So I tried it - importing into TT2006 Basic from Q2007 Basic. Last week, it didn't work. Yesterday, it did.

When the direct import didn't work last week, I went back into Q and exported to the .TXF file; that imported into TT just fine.

But the direct import is much easier. I just hope it keeps working. ; "R. C. White" wrote in

Hrm..i'll have to try again. I'm using turbotax online, and i did what it told me to do, but when i follow the instructions nothing seems to happen regading the import/export from quicken.

thanks jason

Hi, Jason.

Oh. Online? Why didn't you say so? That's quite different, and I know nothing about that. Are you sure that TT Online will import from Quicken?

RC

well, i acutally did say that a couple messages up:) but anyhow, yes i've done it before, and there is a section for it in the online software..but following the directions doesn't yield the results.

Hi, Jason.

No, you didn't. The word "online" does not appear in either of your 2 prior messages (1/6/07 and 1/7/07). The first mention was in the one that I responded to with the question. I hope you keep prior messages for at least a few days. I do.

As I said, TurboTax Online, which I've never used, is quite different from TurboTax, which I've used for years.

Thanks for the link in your latest post. If you see anything about why I can't update to Q2007 R3, please let me know.

RC

RC, you're right, i didn't say "online" i said "turbotax for the web"...semantics:)

Thanks for the help though... jason