Quicken is a powerful financial management tool that can help you keep track of your finances, including your taxes. With its advanced tax reporting features, Quicken can help you understand how your income and expenses are affecting your taxes and make sure you’re taking advantage of all the deductions and credits you qualify for.

For customers on our Windows platform, Quicken assists at every level, adding built-in features for each tier. 

  • In Quicken Starter, you can view your Tax Schedule and Tax Summary
  • Quicken Deluxe adds a report on capital gains and losses
  • At the Quicken Premier level, reporting extends to Schedule A: Itemized Deductions, Schedule B: Interest and Dividends, Schedule D: Capital Gains and Losses, and Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR)
  • Customers with Quicken Home & Business can also view reports for Schedule C: Small Business and Schedule E: Rental Property

For customers on our Mac platform:

Quicken Starter includes a general Tax Schedule report. Customers with Quicken Deluxe can also view reports for individual tax schedules. If you have Quicken Premier, you can additionally view the Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR).

Using categories for tax reporting

Except for Investing Capital Gains (or losses) reports, tax reporting in Quicken is driven by categories. There are automatic tax-related categories built in, but you can also assign a tax schedule to any individual category, including preset Quicken categories or categories you’ve created on your own. 

For example, you can mark income as tax related for categories such as Salary, Dividend Income, and Interest. You can also mark expense categories as tax related, such as Charity, Doctor, Dentist, or Daycare.

To include a transaction in your tax reports, give it a category that’s linked to a tax line item. If you’re using Windows, you can see those categories in your Category List (under Tools) in the column marked Tax Line Item. If you’re using a Mac, you can access the Categories under the Window menu. For existing tax categories, there will be a checkmark under Tax-Related. To see the related tax schedule, double-click the category.

Quicken supports all US tax schedules, so you can add categories for any schedule even if Quicken isn’t displaying any categories for that specific schedule. To do so, you may wish to consult the IRS website for Forms & Instructions to be sure you match your categories to the correct schedules. 

To select a schedule for a category in Quicken for Windows, edit that category (or create a new category) and select the Tax Reporting tab. In Quicken for Mac, when you edit a category (or create a new category), select the Tax-Related checkbox to bring up a list of schedules.

Creating custom tax reports

To access your tax reports in Quicken for Windows, go to Reports → Reports Center and select Tax. You will see a selection of tax reports. You can also generate a custom report from any existing reports by editing the categories to show only the tax categories you want to see. To access your tax reports in Quicken for Mac, select the Reports tab, then select Tax on the Reports sidebar. You can also create any custom tax report you like by clicking New on the Tax tab and selecting the report type and the tax categories you want to see.

Windows example

How to track your Gross IRA Distributions:

  1. Create a category called Gross IRA Distributions (you can also use an existing category)
  2. Select Tax Reporting and find the tax line item or form you need to assign to your category — select the Extended list to see hundreds of items
  3. In this case, you would choose line item 1099-R: Simple total gross distribution

Mac example

How to track your Gross IRA Distributions:

  1. Create a category called Gross IRA Distributions (you can also use an existing category)
  2. Select the Tax-Related check box and find the tax line item or form you need to assign to your category
  3. In this case, you would choose line item 1099-R: Simple total gross distribution

This makes it easy to create reports for even complex tax forms. For example, if you wanted to create a Form 8863 – Education Credits report, find that form in the picker and add the custom categories you need to track your education credits. 

Be aware that you can only use one Tax Line Item per category. There’s a handy description of each Tax Line Item to ensure you’re assigning your categories to the correct line items. 

Once you’ve set up a category, simply choose that category for any relevant transactions. Every time you add a transaction with that category, it’s automatically included in the existing Tax Schedule report, and you can export that information to TurboTax!

Quicken for Windows also provides additional tax planning tools for Quicken Deluxe and above. You can find them under Planner → Tax Planning.

Things to remember

You aren’t limited by the default reports and schedules in Quicken. Beyond the tax categories that are already built in, you can add categories for most IRS Schedules and Forms. Transactions that use tax-related income and expense categories will be included in the associated tax reports (such as Tax Schedule) automatically. You can also create your own custom report to see just the tax forms, schedules, or information you need. Finally, remember that transaction categories with these special tax line items can automatically export to TurboTax.