I was dismayed to find that in my case, in UFile Online for 2022, MaxBack was not choosing the optimal value for federal pension income splitting which maximizes the total refund for the couple.
Without splitting, the situation is Spouse 1 is in bracket 1 and Spouse 2 is in bracket 2.
With MaxBack splitting, Spouse 1 was moved solidly, ie by several thousand dollars, into bracket 2. Yes, the couple refund was better, but I was suspicious because the theory is that Spouse 1 should only move up to the edge of bracket 2.
So I manually set the splitting amount such that Spouse 1 moves exactly to the beginning of bracket 2 and the couple refund indeed improved further. Additionally, changing the new splitting amount by just $10 in either direction makes the refund worse, so this truly seems to be the maximum.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but testing appears warranted.
