Hi, Hooter.
As John Pollard pointed out, Quicken does have (and has had for many years) provision for "tax free" income. But please be aware that there are many "flavors" of "tax free" income! Interest from municipal bonds, for example, is generally excluded from "gross income" by the Internal Revenue Code - BUT many states tax such interest - BUT most states exempt interest only on such bonds issued by their own state or subdivisions (schools, cities, counties, etc.). So, Intuit, in writing Quicken to cover all states, does not have an easy task to provide us an automatic way to segregate such income into multiple "tax free" or "sometimes tax free" categories.
Remember that, while TurboTax is explicitly an income tax application, Quicken is not. Quicken started as primarily a checkbook application - and still performs that function quite well. (Tax free income looks the same as taxable income in our checkbook.) Over the decades, lots of "bells and whistles" have been added to Quicken, including many that recognize tax code quirks, but it simply cannot be expected to handle them all. Where, for example, could we record our personal exemption, which Congress long ago created out of thin air - or the deduction for percentage depletion or the special rules for capital gains, or so many other quirks that just can't be entered in Quicken?
Use Quicken to manage and account for your cash flows and investments. At tax time, print out reports of your various kinds of income. Then apply your own knowledge of tax rules to guide Quicken's numbers into the proper boxes in TurboTax. Most of us can do that for ourselves, but some taxpayers' investments, transactions and situations are complex and professional help will still be needed. And many choose to pay a professional, rather than handle the complexities themselves. (I'm sure the tax code has not gotten simpler since I retired over 20 years ago, so I'm glad that I've greatly simplified my own tax situation since then.)
RC
-- -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2013 R 11 and Windows Live Mail in Win8 x64)
Does anyone know why Quicken does not have the ability to link income from tax free securities such as municipal bonds, tax-free unit trusts, etc. Every time I have to record income for one of these type securities I have to record it as Miscellaneous Income and then classify it as Investment Income and subsequently as tax-free interest income or tax-free dividends. It would seem to me that named securities could be linked to these categories without having to go through all of the mickey-mouse steps to get the recording done properly.