We just opened our independent office this year. We do primarily Canadian returns, but also do US returns on paper. My ultimate goal is to really court that dual-citizen/Canadian resident demographic in our area. I’m taking some US classes right now and will ultimately get the US filing number from the IRS.
Does anyone here do electronic US filing? For anyone that does, can you recommend any US programs (similar to the awesomeness of TC) that we should consider?
–Naturally, we’d love it if TC ever decided to add a module for basic US returns for Canadians who have to file, but I know that’s NUTS because the integration with the IRS would be a strait-up NIGHTMARE. Just wishing into the air
Besides addressing U.S. tax issues (and offering the ethics webinars), they provide Excel, QuickBooks and other software training.!
Many webinars are free.
Great CPE opportunities for the live sessions. No CPE certificates for archived webinars.
Following. I haven’t figured out how to be able to e-file US returns - as far as I am aware the efiler has to be a US citizen and I am not unfortunately. As for tax software I use ATX as it is the most robust for the cheapest price I have found so far. Still not cheap but the best I have found so far. Bert - how did you get access to e-filing or are you/someone in your office a US citizen? Also - ATX runs me about $800 US for unlimited personal returns and 3 states that I can choose each year. I am up to 33 returns so far this year and have another 10-15 probably to do so say just under 50 per year. Any alternatives that would be cheaper to check out? I too would love to have a Tax Cycle US module that takes all the figures in the Canadian form and converts them to US dollars (or vice versa) and inserts them in the right place. I could do a final review and add any information that is specific to that country. As for continuing education I tend to use CPAacedemy.org for free courses - they have lots of good topics.
I use Tax Act for filing extensions on line for free but it is very expensive to use for filing tax returns and also drives me nuts because it is a question and answer type program and you can’t easily see what it is doing in the back ground so making small fixes is a major pain.
I just had a look – looks like they do. I have not tried it but may look into it a bit further. The version for the regular public is a pain to use but not sure about the professional version.
I’ve been using TaxAct since 2012 and I’m satisfied with the support and price. There really is a niche for doing US returns for Canadian residents. From experience, tax preparers based in the US usually don’t get these US tax returns right. Customers also appreciate getting both Canadian and US taxes done at the same place.
