 Income tax 2022-2023, tax software options. Let's do some wealth preservation with income tax preparation. In a prior presentation, we looked at the three general ways, the three general lenses that we will use in order to analyze income tax law and income tax preparation, that being the use of a formula, the use of forms, and the use of software. Now, all of these three options or all of these ways that we use to visualize and understand tax law are related. But we can kind of break them out because when we're thinking about a formula, that's usually the tool we use when we're trying to visualize something. When we look at the forms, those are the actual 1040 forms and related schedules, the end result. And when we look at the software, the software is a tool helping us to better or more quickly do the data input, which will then populate the forms, the forms being a more detailed version of the income tax formula. So now we want to focus in on the software because we will be using software. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category, further broken out by course, each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Although you're not required to use software in order to follow along with the course, but it's a great tool to use because of course it helps make faster data input, allowing you to run scenarios much more quickly. And those scenarios are really the things that get most people's minds working to see what is gonna be happening, to just run different tests, run different trials because all the tax law, a lot of the tax law of course is embedded into the code of the software so we can learn a lot by just adjusting things such as income levels and other data input components. So I'm gonna be using LASERT tax software, that's the tax software I'm most familiar with, of course it will be the current tax software 2022. That's more of a kind of professional tax software that people would typically be using if you're gonna be in a business working multiple tax returns versus individual software which would be something like a TurboTax. These by the way are not the only two types of software out there and I'm not trying to advertise them because I'm not affiliated to them at all. Although I have been using LASERT a lot, I've used other tax softwares as well, but I think LASERT is a really good, robust type of software that fits a lot of needs if you're doing like a tax business type of scenario and the TurboTax of course is aimed at an individual doing their own individual taxes and I think that's a good tool as well. These two happen to be owned by Intuit, Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks. Now I'm not gonna be going in depth here in terms of the data input into say the LASERT screen and try to explain exactly how you data input into like a LASERT data input that would then generate the actual tax forms cause our major focus will be on running different scenarios and going from the data input to the tax forms to see those different scenarios. So it's gonna be more like, I'm gonna change the income level, I'm gonna pretend we have two W2s, I'm gonna change the age of the taxpayer and see what impact that will have on the tax return and then we will of course use the software to focus on the actual tax return, the Form 1040 to see what happens, what's the end result when we run those different scenarios. So the best software to do those and run those different scenarios, I would think would be a type of software that would be a business type of software because it's easier to go back and forth from the software to the actual tax forms. If you use a TurboTax or something like that for an individual income tax return, also a great tool, if you have access to it, that would be a great tool to look at and try out as well but it can be a little bit more cumbersome, a little bit more difficult to jump back and forth from the data input to the end result, the tax forms because it is designed to be more of an interview type of process whereas the larger tax forms for a larger like CPA firm or tax firm are designed to do the data input a little bit quicker so it might be a little bit easier to jump back and forth. So just some options in terms of getting access to these softwares, you can jump on over to a Google search for example and I'm just gonna look at Intuit but there's a lot of other softwares as well but Intuit is a big company, they own QuickBooks and you can see up top, they have some of their softwares that they own up top, they also have a products dropdown here. I like to go all the way to the bottom if I'm looking at their software options because they've had their websites been quite similar for a long time in that at the bottom they've got kind of a breakout of their different softwares down here. So they've broken it out at this point by company so if you see it by company they've got about Intuit investor relations and so on for individuals. Now notice they have a tax software, TurboTax under the individuals so you can kind of get an idea of what the tax software is basically doing or what kind of software it is by where it's located down here. If it's under the individual thing that would be like an individual type of software. And then for the businesses you've got of course their QuickBooks items and then TurboTax again because I think they're considering a small business like a Schedule C then you can still be using a TurboTax. If you had a tax business for accountants then you've got Lassert here. Now I think Lassert and I haven't used a Pro Connect and Pro Series in detail. I might actually go into those and kind of experiment with them in future courses to get a better idea of them but the Lassert is the one I have the most experience with and I think that is gonna be like the most robust giving you access to I think the most forms or it gives you access to a lot of forms and a lot of different state forms. Obviously some of the issues with the taxes is that it's not standardized over the whole country and that you have the federal taxes and then of course you've got the state tax requirements as well and you wanna make sure that you're picking up a tax preparation software if you're in a business that will pick up the necessary, other things, state tax returns and other forms or kinds of taxation that's necessary and I have found that Lassert is pretty good at that and Lassert used to be a long time ago it was owned by a company other than into it. Into it bought it a while back. It was good before it was bought by into it and I think into it's done a pretty, they've done a pretty good job keeping it at the standard that I think it was before and I think it was quite good before and then you've got ProConnect and the Pro series like I've looked at those but I haven't really actually worked in an office preparing with those softwares. So again, I might look at those in the future but any of these options, I would think these three if you can get a sample of it or a free option to it might be a little bit easier to run your scenarios than something like a TurboTax although if you can get access to a TurboTax to run scenarios that would be fine too. Now if I go into Lassert here just to check it out this is the one that I'll be looking at so if you're trying to follow along this is the one that would look closest to what I'm doing. They do have a try free option so you've got experience Lassert at no cost and breeze through your toughest returns so you can type your information into here and check out if you can get some access to the free option when you're actually filling out. So that's one option you can look into. So then the other one here if I go to the other one they've got the ProConnectTax which I've experimented with but I haven't done a lot with. It says it's got to get started item. I don't see that they give you that free option get my free free credits. So you might experiment with that a little bit more and see if they have kind of a free option. If I say get started this one's a cloud based oh here it is sign up for free so they actually do have a free option as well which is great. This one is advertising a cloud based software. You've got to be careful. I would be careful if you're doing actual taxes with the cloud based software because although the argument is from the big companies and from the IRS itself that cloud based software and direct deposit and that kind of stuff is quite secure because their servers are really good and this kind of stuff. It still has the problem of course of accessing it through the cloud. And so and I know the IRS has been giving some warnings about to tax taxpayers being targeted or tax preparers being targeted by people actually hacking into their software which you would think might be a little bit easier to do if you had a cloud based software then like a LASERT a LASERT is still something that you would download to your desktop and open on the desktop. So I'm not saying that someone couldn't hack into a LASERT software on your desktop but you would think it'd be a little bit more difficult because obviously if you see your mouse moving around and they open the LASERT program that might be a little bit more difficult than if they just hosted it on another website and opened it up that way. But in any case, so they've got that one. Obviously some of the benefits of having it on the cloud are that you can work from different locations and you can have other people working have a possibly decentralized office situation multiple people working on the software from different locations. And then you've got the PRO series. So that also has a PRO series option try it for free up top option as well. So you can look into those options like I say Intuit is not the only tax preparation software in town but LASERT is the one that I've worked with the most and Intuit is a big company of course. And if you use QuickBooks and stuff like that you might already have like an account with them and everything. So that's the one that I'll be working with but any software that you can get to run scenarios to run practice problems, check them out, test them out. If you're actually looking to pick up a software for your business then put some time into that because the cost can be significantly different and not all software is the same in terms do you want a cloud or do you want a software that's gonna be on your desktop and the capacity for it to cover all different scenarios is much different. So if you don't have as much needs in terms of multiple states, more complex returns and whatnot you're just focusing on individual income tax returns possibly more on the low income side of things and you're focused on quantity as opposed to more complex tax returns then you might want like a cheaper option that handles those things well and then be able to know what it does not handle so that you can say no I'm not doing those you have to be able to refuse the clients that are not in your wheelhouse which is really hard to do because sometimes it's not easy to do actually but then and then if you're doing a more robust if you're doing more complex tax returns you're most likely gonna need a more expensive software that can handle the functionality of more complex tax returns.