# Quicktax for Mac no longer available



## JGZ1 (Jan 19, 2005)

Folks, anyone here use Quicktax for the Mac? I have used it for years and I have been satisfied. But for 2004 tax year the product is no longer available. In Intuit's words "due to the growing popularity and demand for online applications among Mac users". So now we can only use their web tool.

A few questions:
1) Anyone here who used Quicktax consulted by Intuit on what they wanted for 2004? ( I was not consulted and I do not want to use the web tool).
2) Anyone a little skeptical on their security for hosting your tax info?
3) Suggestions for alternative packages?
4) Anyone else insulted that they are trying to blame their decision on us? (I would have more respect if they just said it was no longer profitable).


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## William (Jan 5, 2004)

If you want a Mac X application to compute (and if you wish, NetFile) your own tax return, you might try TaxTron, formerly called GriffTax. I have used it for about five years and would recommend it enthusiastically.


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## CamCanola (Jan 26, 2004)

*My experience with slowtax...*

After telling my mother that she should be using a computer to do her taxes her and I struggled through 2 days of QuickTax 2004 hell. We finally returned that damn thing because we could not get it to work completely (kept crashing classic, had to run it on native OS9) on several Macs. So after returning it and being issued a refund I popped off an email to Intuit to voice my opinion. Here is the reply I got last April:

---
As a Mac user here in a sea of Windows computers, I feel your pain.
The good news is we are working on a native OS X version as we
speak. 

The plan is to get it out for next year. That's not a promise, just 
what is planned! As you can imagine, the vast majority of our sales 
are to Windows users which means that the vast majority of our 
development dollars are spent on the Windows product. In the past 
we've been able to reuse a huge amount of the Windows code - which
is good because Mac users get the benefit of all the development and 
quality assurance effort that goes into the Windows product. The 
tools we use to effect that reuse work only in the "Classic" 
environment, so we have to rewrite them to work native in OS X - 
that's turned out to be quite a bit of work that needs to be done.

Regards,
-Kent M
Tax Technical Support
Intuit Canada Ltd.
---

Good thing he didn't promise us anything. Oh well, so they dump macs for a while, they'll be miles behind when macs take over the world. I still prefer to submit my taxes the ol'fashion way - in crayon...


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

William said:


> If you want a Mac X application to compute (and if you wish, NetFile) your own tax return, you might try TaxTron, formerly called GriffTax. I have used it for about five years and would recommend it enthusiastically.


GriffTax is a classic app, is it not?

I heard that it will be native next year.


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## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

I tried the demo of Grifftax / Taxtron and found it lousy. It looks like it's an ancient Hypercard program. Ugly. Cumbersome. Not well-suited to what-if analysis, which is why I use a tax program to do my taxes in the first place.


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## EJR (Oct 18, 2003)

I too discovered that QuickTax is dead for Mac users and I am really ticked off to say the least! I received an advertising letter written in french which was strange but no mention of the end of QuicTax for Mac users. Intuit is continuing their support for the US version for Mac users but not for Canadians. I will have to input all new data and loose all my carry forward information to boot. I do at least 10 returns, all for family. I downloaded TaxTron and it is a classic App. (Tip: in order to get the installer to run without errors you must highlight the installer icon> get info>click open as a classic app.) The problem for me with my iMac G5 and 20 inch screen is the font size is very small and there doesn't seem to be any way to enlarge it. I tried changing fonts too. I'm not sure I'm crazy about the fact that my tax info would be stored on intuits servers, not to mention the info of my family members who have trusted me with their information, so I'm not sure what to do.
We are at their mercy!
EJR


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

EJR said:


> The problem for me with my iMac G5 and 20 inch screen is the font size is very small and there doesn't seem to be any way to enlarge it. I tried changing fonts too.
> EJR


Set the resolution of the monitor to something lower. Exactly half of the resolution would be clearest (if possible). The other option is to use the magnification built into MacOS X.


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## archangel (Jan 1, 2003)

For what it's worth, in case anybody from Intuit is watching, this will be the first year since '96 that I haven't used their product, still have the floppies. They did this a few years ago and then showed up with a Mac version. One can only hope. 

I'm interested in the discussions if anybody knows if there are other versions out there, or even Revenue Canada's.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

archangel said:


> For what it's worth, in case anybody from Intuit is watching


And let me add that Intuit would see more Mac sales if they actually released the product before the RRSP deadline and charged the same as the PC version, or at least only a few dollars more.


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## EJR (Oct 18, 2003)

Thanks hayesk,
I'll play with the resolution. The font is quite blurry when I changed it but maybe I can tweak it. The Magnification doesn't work in classic, seemed fine in OSX.
EJR


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## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

While not the same as a full tax software application, I have used MyTax by Peel Technologies. It's an Excel spreadsheet that fully calculates all the math of a tax return. Free to try and just $10 for unlimited-use. The cleverness of it alone gets me to send the author the $10 every year.

The 2004 version is not ready yet, but you can sign up for an e-mail notice.


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## William (Jan 5, 2004)

hayesk said:


> GriffTax is a classic app, is it not?
> 
> I heard that it will be native next year.



You are right. It is currently not native X, but it is expected to be so next year


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## dingem (Jan 29, 2003)

I have been using the web-based version of Ufile (www.ufile.ca) and it has worked nicely for me. Ufile does not like Safari but seems to work fine with some alternative browsers available (e.g. Firefox).


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## Kirtland (Aug 18, 2002)

I too used ufile last year and was happy with it. I got too frustrated with Quicktax and their lack of respect for the Mac user. I would be hard pressed to ever use them again even if they did put out new software for OSX.


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## Mackieca (Apr 15, 2009)

*QuickTax for Mac 2008 is available*

Better late than never... Just saw this thread. QuickTax for Mac 2008 :clap:


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Mackieca said:


> Better late than never... Just saw this thread. QuickTax for Mac 2008 :clap:


Other options too.


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## RC51Pilot (Mar 26, 2004)

Online Tax Preparation, Netfile | File Online with QuickTax has served my needs for the last 8 years.


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## bsenka (Jan 27, 2009)

The trend towards online tax prep concerns me. If you netfile, that's one thing, it's a direct connection to Revenue Canada's servers. Still a security concern, but not that much so.

What I don't like is trusting a software developer with storing my info on their servers. I'm shocked that so many other people don't seem to care.


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## RC51Pilot (Mar 26, 2004)

bsenka said:


> The trend towards online tax prep concerns me. If you netfile, that's one thing, it's a direct connection to Revenue Canada's servers. Still a security concern, but not that much so.
> 
> What I don't like is trusting a software developer with storing my info on their servers. I'm shocked that so many other people don't seem to care.


You trust a bank to hold all of your financial info. You trust a credit reporting agency that you probably have never even talked to, to hold credit info. And I can guarantee they outsource some, not all, but some of their data storage to the very same companies that Intuit uses.

You aren't entrusting anything to a software developer, you are entrusting your information to a company or entity that stands to lose a great deal should that trust be breeched. Because of that there are numerous checks and balances required before this sort of thing goes live. I believe my data is safer with them than it is on my own hard drive to be honest. But then, that's because I'm one of those so-called software developers that works in the financial industry doing just this sort of thing


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

bsenka said:


> The trend towards online tax prep concerns me. If you netfile, that's one thing, it's a direct connection to Revenue Canada's servers. Still a security concern, but not that much so.
> 
> What I don't like is trusting a software developer with storing my info on their servers. I'm shocked that so many other people don't seem to care.


I'm shocked at how so many are concerned about personal financial info being seen by a huge company that has everything to lose if they don't hold your data safe, but are perfectly fine to pay via credit card at a gas station and hand their card to a guy making just above minimum wage who has a lot to gain by doing bad stuff with your credit card.


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## broken_g3 (Jun 27, 2008)

This is one of the oldest threads I've ever seen resurrected. I mean, this is back from when Apple still used PowerPC. That's a LONG time ago.


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## lara (Mar 15, 2009)

ehMax said:


> I'm shocked at how so many are concerned about personal financial info being seen by a huge company that has everything to lose if they don't hold your data safe, but are perfectly fine to pay via credit card at a gas station and hand their card to a guy making just above minimum wage who has a lot to gain by doing bad stuff with your credit card.


I disagree. Gas station guy, at most, will clone my credit card and go on a spending spree. Cancel that credit card, and problem, for the most part, will go away.

If my tax return info got compromised, the bad guys will have all the info (SIN number, date of birth, address, spouse's name, spouse's SIN number etc.) to create whole new stolen identity to do major major damage to me. Once this info is out there, I can't "recall" it or cancel it. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Also, "huge companies" are only worried about loosing everything if they have something to loose. ie. if they are going bankrupt or taken over, as more than a few Mac tax software companies have, they may not care about your data.

L


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## RC51Pilot (Mar 26, 2004)

lara said:


> ...Also, "huge companies" are only worried about loosing everything if they have something to loose. ie. if they are going bankrupt or taken over, as more than a few Mac tax software companies have, they may not care about your data.
> 
> L


Do you think your data is any more safe in the mainframes of the Canadian Revenue Agency? As I pointed out, the company hosting the data for Intuit likely does so for many other corporations, so you can bet that their data is very secure. They have a great deal to lose. Since financial loss is a great motivator for them, I would be more inclined to trust them with my data, than the government


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