Ah, Tax Season. No surprise — I do my own taxes. I have been the “tax man” for many years, filling out taxes for me and my spouse, my parents (when they were alive), my mother-in-law…

For many years, I used TurboTax as my go-to software, taking advantage of the annual discount rate offered to CIBC customers. I include this research should any of you (a) bank with CIBC and (b) use TurboTax (which used to be called QuickTax).

Anyway, I don’t use TurboTax anymore. TurboTax had a nasty bug a few tax seasons ago related to Final Returns (I was filling out my late father’s final tax return) and after spending several hours with support, who ultimately admitted there was some bug, advised me to direct a call to the developer line and explain the problem to them — from scratch — I was less than impressed. And this after enduring yet another price increase (usually hidden as “upgrades” to do simple tasks, like add capital gains) I decided to look elsewhere for my tax filing needs.

I think it was a Rob Carrick column¹ that advised me that upstart Wealthsimple offered tax software which was free². As a certified cheapskate, “free” was certainly a price I could get behind. And so I gave it a try a few years ago.

I think Wealthsimple uses Tax as a loss-leader to get you started on their platform. It certainly worked that way for me. I started using just Tax, then added a prepaid Mastercard (no-fee FX), then added an RRSP/RRIF account (to get a new laptop), now a few savings accounts, investment account, Wealthsimple Visa card….

Anyway, you might be dubious about a free product, but it works great. It supports everything you would expect including auto-fill, eFile, saving information across tax years so you don’t have to type excessively, support for joint filing with your spouse…I’ll note that my tax needs are relatively simple: T4s, T5s, T3s, plenty of non-registered stock sales that generate capital gains and losses…Compared to QuickTax, Wealthsimple Tax is a little less user-friendly but a little easier to skip around. It didn’t take long for me to find my way around.

The hidden cost? You have to setup a login with an email address, and this will generate Wealthsimple marketing emails, which may or may not be welcome³. The Recommendations section includes helpful tips aka upsell opportunities like opening a TFSA to avoid paying tax on bank interest. But to me, it’s a fair trade.

1. Mr. Carrick now has a Substack too. Retirement for him I guess means “doing the same stuff I did before without deadlines”, which is good news for the DIY investor. ↩︎
2. Wealthsimple added Tax to their lineup back in 2019 with the acquisition of SimpleTax, a product some of you may know…? ↩︎
3. I do like their Monday newsletter called TLDR. ↩︎