 Income tax 2021-2022, LASERT tax software. Getting tax refunds to the backs, diving into income tax 2021-2022. Tax software will be one of the three perspective, three angles that we'll look at tax law through, the other two being with the use of a formula, with the use of the actual tax forms, and then of course with the use of tax software. And this course we're gonna be using LASERT tax software. I'm not affiliated to LASERT tax software, but it is software that we're familiar with. You don't need to have LASERT tax software in order to follow along with the course, the general concept being that we want the idea of being able to use the tax software to help us populate the forms and then be able to jump from the tax software to the forms and then be able to analyze the forms in a more theoretical method, taking a step back, thinking about it in terms of a tax formula. So you don't really need the same type of software. You don't really need any software in order to follow along with the course because we're gonna use the data input of the software to generate the forms and then take a look at and analyze the forms. But if you did have access to tax software, it could be a great tool because clearly the software is designed to guide people through the tax law. And so it could be a useful help in order to understand the tax law as well to safeguard against mistakes as you do data input into the software and helps you to populate the actual tax forms. So there's a whole lot of different softwares that you can use and it can be quite overwhelming when you're thinking about the different tax softwares. The one we're gonna be using here is gonna be LISERT tax. Again, you don't need to have LISERT tax but you can think about the types of software in two separate kind of categories in general, professional software and then the individual software. The LISERT falling into the professional software kind of category. Many different professional softwares will be much the same in that they're trying to maximize more tax returns that can be done in a shorter period of time. Clearly their pricing structure will be structured in such a way that it's going to be for people that do a lot of tax returns. The data input will be structured in such a way that it's assuming that the person putting the data in has a pretty good understanding of the tax law and it's making the jumping back and forth from the data input to the tax forms. The Form 1040 for example, very easy. So you can see the data input go right to the tax form. Individual software, software designed to help individuals who may not be as experienced with the tax law is designed in more of an interview process, asking you questions as you go through the data input so that it can help guide you through the types of things that you might need in more of a question and answer type of format. Great for people that are doing their own tax return. Possibly people that don't know exactly what they want to do in terms of the tax law or what might be applicable to them. But it can be more time consuming as you jump back and forth from the actual tax forms to the data input screens. Both softwares would be great. You can use any software and follow along with the course because the concept of putting the data input into the system and then checking the tax forms that are generated from it is one that is the main thing we're looking for just in theory or in principle. If you wanted to experiment with different types of tax software that you could look into, the software we're using is ByIntuit, which is also the owner of QuickBooks, but it's easier to find LASERT tax software by basically typing it into the search window in your favorite browser, LASERT tax software. For some reason, I think they keep the brand a little bit distinct from their other brands and their accounting software. So for example, if I went to the Intuit website, I-N-T-U-I-T dot com, Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks, you see a snapshot of their softwares up top which includes TurboTax upfront, at least at this point, because it's tax season possibly. And then of course QuickBooks is up here and then they've got some other of their applications up top. They don't have LASERT for some reason. I don't know why that is, but if you go into, if you just search in a browser for LASERT tax software, then you'll find something. And again, it's in an Intuit dot com website that you can take a look at it. And it looks like they do have a free trial version down here. So if I went to their compare professional stuff right here, it's got to start the free trial. So you might be able to get a free trial of it, which would be great for practice if you were able to do that or any kind of software that you can practice with. And then they have their comparison here. This is the Intuit LASERT versus the Intuit Pro Connect tax and the Intuit Pro Series tax. So you could do some comparing and contrasting. If you are working as a tax professional, then you want to base it. You want to really consider what your tax software will be because obviously they have different prices on them. They could be expensive. That's going to be one of your biggest expenses, most likely if you were doing a tax professional or preparing taxes. And you might be saying, hey, I'm going to go for a software that meets my needs. But if it doesn't grow with you at the same point in time, you want to be careful of that because it could be quite tedious moving from one software to another software if you're a tax professional. So clearly you want secure tax software. You would like tax software that will be able to expand with you as you expand your business. I'm not promoting LASERT in essence to do that. You can look at these softwares and any software that you want, but just realize that what you really want to be able to do is perform the data forward. So you want software that if I did prior years tax return, I want to be able to perform that data into the next year's tax return, which will help me with a side-by-side comparison. It'll typically give me reports that gives me a side-by-side. It'll help me with some of the data input because it'll give me some of the stuff from the prior year. It will help to generate kind of data input forms for your clients, meaning you can give them like an organizer to help them organize their data. The software can do that. And if there's any carryover information that needs to be carried over for whatever reason from the prior year to the current year, that stuff is way easier. You know, if you're using the same software from the prior year to the current year rather than try to data input in it in again. So just be careful if you're starting a business from scratch, put some time in to think about what's the best software? What's the software that you think is gonna be around for a long period of time? What's the software that will be able to expand with my business? If I'm currently working in one state, can I buy software that's gonna be working in multiple states? If I need multiple states, or if I'm gonna expand to have multiple states, or do I not need that feature and so on and so forth? So keep that in mind. And one more time, I'm not promoting LISERT necessarily to do that. That's just one I've got familiar with. I've used LISERT for more than any other tax software, although I've used other softwares as well. And if you're on an individual tax, it's TurboTax. Again, this happens to be the Intuit website, which I work with with QuickBooks and whatnot. So I'm familiar with the name TurboTax, although I don't use it much because I use LISERT. But that's for the individual side of things. So if you just want one tax return to be filed, then that would be most likely the pricing model would be designed around something like that. And then if you wanted to look into other options for free software, you could go to the IRS website. We might look at this more in a future presentation. But on the IRS website, they got something called IRS FreeFile. And then it's basically linking you to other types of software that has a free file component to it if your income is below a certain threshold. So that could be useful for individuals. And you might be able to basically just start, you might be able to advise people on how to do this through software that's actually free by simply helping them out to find the tools to prepare their tax returns that are below a certain threshold and figuring out what the best tools are out there for them. That could be a valuable thing for a lot of people because this stuff can be confusing, especially with a lot of the law changes that have happened. So we might go into some of this free file stuff and some of the other kinds of softwares that are available in a little bit more detail in future presentations. Note, I did take a look at their free trial as well and logged into that. And here's what I have for the free trial if you want to look into that further. It says maybe this can help get you started, try them for free, get free trial version of Pro Series, LISERT and Pro Connect and see for yourself why our suite of solutions remain the number one choice of tax professionals. Again, I'm not promoting them. This is just, I'm just checking them out here. So you might want to take a look at it. You can get free access to it and practice with it. We have the download the Pro Series trial here, download LISERT and it says the Pro Series Evolution includes Pro Series tax software for tax year 2019. So you might be looking at something that's going to be older tax software. Obviously they don't want to give you the software that you would be using at the current point so that you could basically prepare your taxes for free but you could still basically practice with it. The Evolution software will not e-file or print so you're not going to be able to print or file it with the software. Otherwise it is fully functional, one copy per practice, new customers only. The LISERT Evolution includes LISERT tax software for tax year 2019. The Evaluation software will not e-file or print, otherwise it's fully functional, one copy per practice, new customers only and then they have to finish the Pro Connect sign up already an Intuit customer. If you already used Intuit, QuickBooks, LISERT, Pro Series or TurboTax, simply sign up with same username and password you already have and you'll get immediate access to Pro Connect for free. If you used Pro Connect in the past, your account is still active so just sign up in again and reset your password to gain free access, sign in to your existing Intuit account. So there are some options that maybe are available to you to get some practice in or some information about different types of software and analyze them a little bit further.