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The value of a currency is determined by what people are willing to pay for it (again, just like anything).

Art being sold for 10s of millions of dollars.
Non-voting, non-dividend-paying stocks.

There are plenty of examples of items being purchased, physical or virtual, with the primary goal of trusting a greater fool to pay yet more for it (there are tax advantages to certain losses and gains however).

Spectrum magazine has a current series on blockchain technology.

Actually being a small business is very advantageous. While "rates" may be high, you can deduct pretty much anything. This is in stark contrast to an individual wage earner that has to bear nearly 100% of work related costs.

• When you're an employee and earn a wage, you pay income tax on what you make.
• When you own a company, you get paid two ways:
  • You earn a wage, which the company deducts as an expense and you pay income tax on, just like the employee wage owner.
  • And you pay corporate tax on the company's profit, plus income tax when you pay yourself with that profit. (In general; the reality is a lot more complicated.)

That last bullet point means unless you can figure out a way to pay zero corporate tax, the small business owner's overall tax rate is always higher than a wage earner's. This double taxation of small business owners compared to a wage earner discouraged wage earners from making the leap and starting their own business. Why start a business and incur all the headaches that come along with it just so you could be taxed more than when you're an employee? So to remove this impediment to the average Joe starting a small business, the government made LLCs (limited liability corporations). LLCs are pass-through entities for tax purposes - the LLC isn't taxed. Instead, any money the company makes is automatically considered your income. So you only end up paying income tax on it, not both corporate and income tax. (Partnerships are another option, but involve a lot more bookkeeping which generally isn't worth it unless you're actually partners with someone in the business and want the protections it provides.)

And if a wage-earner is paying for work-related expenses (isn't being reimbursed by their employer), those expenses are deductible on their personal income taxes.

According to Intuit, profit from selling BTC is taxed like income, holding BTC which is increasing in value is taxed as capital gains, and "earning" BTC through mining is taxed as revenue which can be offset by mining costs: https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...

sorry, $14,000. https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...

You're smoking dope, and they're feeding you a line. The software has to be certified, but even then, not by deployment. And for a small business, that's handled by the point of sale vendor, not the merchant.

Now explain why the POS vendors are losing revenue due to certification delays. Is is your theory that they're tanking their business to support the line? Or selling the dope? My theory is that you simply don't understand that level 3 certification is literally by deployment and too self-satisfied to consider that you might be wrong.

Wow. Never heard of such a thing. How do they keep books?

QuickBooks Enterprise with cloud hosting.

http://enterprisesuite.intuit.com/products/enterprise-solutions/hosting/

Such software is inherently out-of-date, and way too expensive for anyone doing less than $1MM of business...

Bullshit. It's a Quickbooks plug in:
http://marketplace.intuit.com/...

A W2 tax from shows the amount of taxes withheld from your paycheck. It's used to file your taxes.
https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...

I presume the article refers to this data. Does anyone have any idea what the scammers can do with this?

presumably they can file and claim your tax refund when they have enough information to impersonate you? Especially if they file before you get around to doing it yourself...

A W2 tax from shows the amount of taxes withheld from your paycheck. It's used to file your taxes.
https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...

I presume the article refers to this data. Does anyone have any idea what the scammers can do with this?

Here's why you're wrong about the tax credit:

https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta...

"As a tax credit, the amount of your qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle tax credit reduces your tax bill on a dollar-for-dollar basis. In order to claim the credit, you have to have a tax liability you report on your return. It will not increase your refund beyond what is owed. Depending on your liability and other tax credits you take, you may not see the full tax savings of the tentative credit you calculate on Form 8936. This is because the credit is a nonrefundable credit. Nonrefundable tax credits cannot reduce your tax bill below zero and also reduce your tax bill for a number of other credits taken before reducing the remaining tax bill for your plug-in electric motor vehicle credit."

Here's why you're wrong about EV chargers in California Apartments:

AB 2565 makes it a requirement for a an apartment landlard to allow the installation of an EVSE (charger). While the charger can be had for less than $1,000 with rebates, installation still costs. If there's insufficient wiring to a garage. That costs, too. If there is no garage, then you need to buy a weatherized EVSE and have it installed outside. The renter is responsible for all costs, reporting, planning, and including removal when the apartment lease is up. This is cost prohibitive.

So true, HEAR HEAR! Forget about making a legible, sensible tax code like the rest of the world -- just bolster the shit you guys have got, add an imperial shit-ton more overhead, obfuscate!!!!! and then let's all get together with the lobbyists for an outrageous afterparty. Let the proles break a million IRS rules while trying to remember all the words on the 400 pounds of paper your USA tax code takes up. Once everybody is a criminal by trying to honestly file a return you can stuff those for-profit prisons full of easy prey. Keep all the loose ends tied up :)))))
 
Did I mention how much Intuit and these other fuckers are paying to lobby against common sense and for more rules, laws, secret laws and taxes? Pork for everyone!

One word; gaurantee. If the correct information is entered into a Turbotax and they make a mistake in calculation you can get re-paid for penalties and interest under their Turbotax accurate calculations guarantee. Open Source software can not do that.

Of course Open Source software could come with a guarantee, if you get it from a vendor.
Are you confusing free software with open source?

One word; gaurantee. If the correct information is entered into a Turbotax and they make a mistake in calculation you can get re-paid for penalties and interest under their Turbotax accurate calculations guarantee. Open Source software can not do that.

This is untrue. Married people always have the option to file taxes separately. You pick whatever way works out best. Here is a link that explains why there is a big tax benefit to being married, not a penalty.

The Feds and State governments get a lot of revenue from Alcohol taxes. They don't have an interest in curtailing its consumption.

Downright embarrassing how crappy TurboTax is, too. There's a bug that -- at least in the Mac edition -- does not apply your complete refund to estimated tax payments if you go back and make any changes to your return. https://ttlc.intuit.com/questi... The latest complaint came today, and one of the earlier posters had alerted Intuit.

It's downright embarrassing how little money it even takes to buy the government. Intuit makes a couple billion dollars a year. The lobbying spend, $2.6 million, is about eight hours' worth of revenues.

You are getting your own money back without interest.

Actually, for the past couple years, you can actually earn a sort of "interest" on your refund, for example in TurboTax's partnership with Amazon, which will give you a 10% bonus on your federal refund in the form of an Amazon gift card. Granted, for this privilege you'd have to pay for TurboTax, but even so, if you actually buy a lot from Amazon, you're getting a much better guaranteed return than a bank account or CD.

It would be better to owe $2K each year than to expect refunds.

Or you could turn a $2K refund into $2200 of buying power... assuming you buy from Amazon. Amazon is the only place I've heard of this kind of benefit, but I assume others will try to do this sort of thing.

The lackluster jobs reports have almost nothing to do with automation and worker replacement. Big companies don't hire in the mass needed to move the unemployment stats much more than a few tenths of percent. This is because they already have hired people. They've been hiring people for years as the grow. At some point you can decide to get a little more out of the people you hire by pushing them a bit, or maybe making their jobs a little more productive. But either way, the last thing a modern business wants to do is hire a bunch of people they'll have to layoff down the road.

Small business is where the growth in employment happens. Small business expansion is at an all-time low, and has been since the rise of stupid laws like Sarbanes/Oxley, that can devastate a small company while just adding to the accounting burden of big companies (who can absorb it or pass it along to their customers). Until the US becomes small-business friendly again, there's not going to be much job growth.

And what about all that automation? The whole point is that robots are getting cheap. That means it's going to be possible for small businesses and entrepreneurs are going to be able to buy them. What will they do with them? How about custom manufacturing everything? If you've ever remodeled a kitchen, you know that there's a lot of activity around building cabinets, designing the space, picking materials, etc. It's one of those things that produces a lot of activity and is expensive, but not so far out of reach that average people can't afford it. Now think about the automotive aftermarket, custom motorcycles, even additions to homes. All of these things are somewhat custom today. Imagine if those same ideas were applied to cell phones, where a designer could build a model of a phone just for you, have the circuit board made, 3Dprint the case in any color(s) you want, Assemble the phone in the back room and finally, gets you a detailed breakdown of the cost, which is surprisingly not much more than today's iPhone 5S.

Oh, and when you drop it, can easily fit a new glass cover on it because he knew you were going to do that.

This shouldn't be a big surprise...the flat rate plan was clearly a loss-leader meant to gain marketshare.

Most of the fee you pay to companies like Square doesn't go to them. It goes towards the "Interchange Fee" charged by Visa, MasterCard, and AMEX. These interchange fees vary based on card type (for example, fees are higher on "reward cards"...that's what funds the "reward"), and transaction type ("card not present", for example, has a higher rate). Check over the interchange fees for Visa and MasterCard, and you'll see that Square doesn't have a lot of room to move below 2.75% and still make money.

The three big players in this "mobile payments" space are Paypal Here (2.7%), Intuit's GoPayment (2.75% flat, or $12.95/M + 1.75%) or, the aforementioned Square (2.75%). At the moment, if you're swiping more than $1295/M, Intuit's $12.95+1.75% would be the best choice...unclear though, how long that plan will be around since it's a loss-leader as well.

The market that's more curious to me is the "card not present" market...payment processors for websites. Stripe seems to be the darling of the Slashdot crowd, but their pricing is horrible. They offer 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and won't offer to discount it until you're doing $1M+ per year. Contrast with Paypal's Payment Pro which drops down first to 2.5%+$0.30 once you hit $3k/month, then down to 2.2%+$0.30 once you hit $10k/month. Stripe has a few features that PPP doesn't, but they would need to be real important to you to pay that much more.

DD costs companies next to nothing. The Automated Clearing House (which is how they all do it) charges $0.35/transaction.

Wells Fargo for instance charges $10/month + $.50/transactions for non deposits into WF accounts. Not a fortune, but for my previous small-business employer of 8 employees with paychecks every other week, that $.35/transaction really was $1+/transaction.

A couple of other direct deposit providers that I found real quickly:
Quick Books direct deposit is $1.15/check.
US Bank is $28 + .35/transaction

Man Intuit is fast!

http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/articles/INF21187

Turbotax for iPhone & Android.

Just sayin'...

I think his point was that if Microsoft drops the ball enough, Quickbooks may start releasing versions for OSX, or Linux.

You mean like this and this? To say nothing of what they seem to be pushing hardest these days.

I think his point was that if Microsoft drops the ball enough, Quickbooks may start releasing versions for OSX, or Linux.

You mean like this and this? To say nothing of what they seem to be pushing hardest these days.

I think his point was that if Microsoft drops the ball enough, Quickbooks may start releasing versions for OSX, or Linux.

You mean like this and this? To say nothing of what they seem to be pushing hardest these days.

Well they did finally re-compile Mac Quicken 2007 for x86 (only $15! to upgrade) so I guess they found the napkin. After a year of searching for it.

It's not an upgrade for $15, it is a stand-alone product that's Mac OS X Lion compatible, no previous version required. You can get the direct download for only $15. I opted for this instead of dumping $50 on Quicken Essentials which from all accounts is inferior in every way. After I upgraded to Mountain Lion this weekend, it was the first app I launched, and I was promptly greeted with an update notification to improve Quicken 2007 performance for Mountain Lion.

So this Quicken Essentials for Mac isn't the Quicken you wanted?

It doesn't even understand that a loan is made up of both interest and principle -- so, no, a product that can't track your finances if you've taken out a loan is NOT providing the "essentials" of financial management.

Even Intuit knows that which is why they started selling a kit to people who bought the 2007 version of Quicken continue to run it on current OS X versions.

$3.9 billion in revenue last year

Yet they whine about "spreading resources too thin" as an excuse for inexcusably bad Mac support...

Die, Intuit, Die. Die, Die Die.

$3.9 billion in revenue last year

So this Quicken Essentials for Mac isn't the Quicken you wanted?

Anybody here tried this?

https://paymentnetwork.intuit.com/

For downloading I have no idea where I can download and install Office, Quicken, or TurboTax legally.

Office, Quicken, TurboTax. HTH!

And sleep is not instant on.

"Yeah, I asked for a shaggy dog, but I didn't mean that shaggy."

Come on. What do you think the iPad does when you "turn it off"? It goes to sleep, just like the iPhone and iPod (and Android devices, and most smartphones and PDAs). When it has to do a full reboot, it takes around 15 seconds, which is nothing special.

I have had countless times I've gone to boot a Netbook or Laptop that I left in sleep for a week only to find the battery had completely drained.

Heh, my Mac laptop did that even if I shut it down completely. I think that's a "feature" of the battery.

I have yet to find a Netbook with a 10 hour battery life

Try this one, this one, or this one.

Hell, even my full-sized laptop will run for 6 hours on a charge.

For downloading I have no idea where I can download and install Office, Quicken, or TurboTax legally.

Office, Quicken, TurboTax. HTH!

And sleep is not instant on.

"Yeah, I asked for a shaggy dog, but I didn't mean that shaggy."

Come on. What do you think the iPad does when you "turn it off"? It goes to sleep, just like the iPhone and iPod (and Android devices, and most smartphones and PDAs). When it has to do a full reboot, it takes around 15 seconds, which is nothing special.

I have had countless times I've gone to boot a Netbook or Laptop that I left in sleep for a week only to find the battery had completely drained.

Heh, my Mac laptop did that even if I shut it down completely. I think that's a "feature" of the battery.

I have yet to find a Netbook with a 10 hour battery life

Try this one, this one, or this one.

Hell, even my full-sized laptop will run for 6 hours on a charge.

I strongly suspect that the number of people who need features present in Office 2007 but not in OOo 3.x is a lot less than the number of people locked into WIndows because of Quickbooks.

You're not locked into Windows if you need Quickbooks. Intuit also as a version for Macs. And it's universal, it runs on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

Falcon

Quickbooks Pro 2009? No Mac version to be found yet.

Quicken? No 2008 or 2009 version for the Mac! 2007 is *still* the latest one they offer! WTF?

They've been promising they're going to replace Quicken for Mac with a whole new financial management product, but it's not even scheduled for release until Summer of 2009!

http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/mac-personal-finance.jsp

Personally, I'm looking at switching over to a shareware product called iBank. It can import all your info from Quicken, looks MUCH nicer, and actually has regular updates:

http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/

Consider MindTouch over Sharepoint. MindTouch offers many many other usability features, scalability and extensibility features compared to Sharepoint. Dramatically improve business automation and collaboration within your teams and departments. www.mindtouch.com MindTouch has millions of users and powers thousands upon thousands of public sites like: * http://developer.mozilla.org/ (Mozilla) * http://ipp.developer.intuit.com/ (Intuit) * http://baseswiki.org/ (Harvard-Kennedy Business & The United Nations & The World Bank) * http://soapedia.mysoapware.com/ (Doc.com) To name a few...

Nolo Press is a good resource for legal information. If you plan on freelancing for a while, you should consider incorporating to provide liability protection. Also, get business insurance, a good accountant and a lawyer.

Good luck!

One of the two earlier shifted staff members is running Parallels on her Mac to deal with QuickBooks

Weird, considering that QuickBooks is available for Mac: Quickbooks for Mac

Intuit has made a major push recently for mac:

http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/pro-mac-business-finance-software.jsp

There are still the issues of acceptance, and support.

Consider Quickbooks for example, even if there were a f/oss equivalent that was just as good, or better:

* No significant cost advantage: QuickBooks simple start is free:
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/free-accounting-software.jhtml
Or I can buy the full version of QuickBooks Pro 2008 in only $145:
http://www.amazon.com/Intuit-403697-QuickBooks-Pro-2008/dp/B000V4PLWM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1217794735&sr=8-1
Seems to me that any cost advantage of using a foss alternative is negligible..

* Wide acceptance: I think most businesses are much more comfortable using products that are accepted standards.

* Wealth of available add-ons: Intuit has a very active community of 3rd party developers. You can buy practically any kind of an add-on you can imagine. These add-ons cost money, but at least they are available.

* Major company: I think a lot of businesses are not comfortable with a product unless there is a major company behind that product. I have to admit, even I am not comfortable with software products that are essentially one man operations.

* Support: I can always hire somebody who knows quickbooks, or find a "ProAdvisor" consultant, or I can get support from the company, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of developers who specialize in developing for quickbooks. I can not see where that is true for any project.

* Training availability and costs. I can hire people who already know quickbooks. If I hire somebody to work on some foss alternative, then there will be a significant training expense. Of course, there is also the issue of training availability.

* Documentation: If I had to pick one thing that kills the usefulness of more foss projects than anything else, this would win in a slam-dunk. Of course, this varies among projects, some foss projects have great documentation. But, I can always find plenty of books, or other documentation for popular proprietary financial apps.

* Many accountants, maybe as many as 200,000, use QB and recommend it to their clients. Some accountants will charge much more for files that are not in QB format.

* QB has much better 3rd party integration. For example, ecommerce packages like oscommerce, and magento, work with quickbooks, not foss alternatives. Msft accounting works with ebay. I can not find that sort of integration with foss software.

While I'm all for open source and regarding hardware drivers I wouldn't want it any other way, let's not forget that open source does not have to be pushed around at the application level at the expense of usability. Professional-level applications are critical for the use and expansion of Linux, and proprietary software vendors should be encouraged to develop their software for Linux, not alienated by being badgered to give away their source code. Currently, there is a heated discussion on the Debian list regarding PCB and CAD software availability. One camp (me) is encouraging users to write to software houses and to request that they port their software to Linux, with the other camp rejecting all contact with proprietary software vendors unless it is a demand for the source code. Currently, myself and other engineers cannot use Linux at work because we must run proprietary engineering software, such as Solidworks in my case. For those who want to help, please write to these companies and let them know that we are interested in their software on Linux:

Intuit (Quicken, Quickbooks) http://www.intuit.com/contact/ (requires registration)

Adobe (Photoshop, Flash CS3 Professional, Captivate, Dreamweaver, Studio) http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Sony (Vegas Studio) http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/corporate/contacts.asp

Autodesk (Autocad) http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1073074

SolidWorks http://www.solidworks.com/pages/company/SolidWorksOfficeWorldwide.html (requires registration)

Sage (Act!) http://www.act.com/company/contactus/

Nuance (Dragon Naturally Speaking) http://www.nuance.com/help/contact/

hardin-soft (BM-Win Plus (mailing address correction software)) http://www.hardin-soft.com//forms/feedback.html

Daz (Bryce (3D modeling and animation)) http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/support/rnlogin/-/?p_sid=vOwOJN6j&p_accessibility=&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=&p_li=&p_next_page=std_alp.php (requires registration)

ArenaNet (Guild wars): http://www.arena.net/contact.php

Ironclad Games (Sins of a Solar Empire) http://www.ironcladgames.com/contact.html

Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) http://us.blizzard.com/support/webform-us.xml?gameId=0

Firzxis (Civilization IV) http://www.firaxis.com/support/

Electronic Arts (lots of games) http://www.info.ea.com/company/company_prlist.php

My personal problem is that I need Solidworks, so for emphasis I'll repeat their address here:
http://www.solidworks.com/pages/company/SolidWorksOfficeWorldwide.html

Please write to these companies and let them know that we need their products on Linux. Copy the list and write to one company a week. Thanks.

Take a look at these sites:

http://marketplace.intuit.com/
http://quickbooks-add-ons.com/

Notice all the application for the construction industry, property management, inventory management, point of sale, and so on? All of those apps integrate with QB. Now tell me there is something similar in gnucash.

GNUCash may be okay for an individual, or a mom-and-pop operation, but I don't see where it is adequate for complicated medium business.

What foss financial software seems to be missing:

All of the following is based my limited understanding, and my opinions. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.

* Cost advantage: QuickBooks simple start is free:
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/free-accounting-software.jhtml
Or I can buy the full version of QuickBooks in only $128:
http://www.qbpro2008.com/quickbooks-2008-coupons-for-amazon/
Seems to me that any cost advantage of using a foss alternative is negligible.

* Ease of use: Somewhat debatable. But some people site this as a primary reason for Intuit's amazing success with QuickBooks - supposedly 87% of small businesses use QuickBooks. Although, I have to wonder how the number of foss users can be accurately counted?

* Integration with online banking: my understanding is that only intuit or msft products can easily integrate with online banking. Not absolutely sure about that.

* Payroll: very regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.

* Taxes: somewhat regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.

* Wide acceptance: I think most businesses are much more comfortable using products that are accepted standards.

* Wealth of available add-ons: Intuit has a very active community of 3rd party developers. You can buy practically any kind of an add-on you can imagine. These add-ons cost money, but at least they are available.

* Major company: I think a lot of businesses are not comfortable with a product unless there is a major company behind that product. I have to admit, even I am not comfortable with software products that are essentially one man operations.

* Support: I can always hire somebody who knows quickbooks, or find a "ProAdvisor" consultant, or I can get support from the company, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of developers who specialize in developing for quickbooks. I can not see where that is true for any project.

* Training availability and costs. I can hire people who already know quickbooks. If I hire somebody to work on some foss alternative, then there will be a significant training expense. Of course, there is also the issue of training availability.

* Documentation: If I had to pick one thing that kills the usefulness of more foss projects than anything else, this would win in a slam-dunk. Of course, this varies among projects, some foss projects have great documentation. But, I can always find plenty of books, or other documentation for popular proprietary financial apps.

* Many accountants, maybe as many as 200,000, use QB and recommend it to their clients. Some accountants will charge much more for files that are not in QB format.

* QB has much better 3rd party integration. For example, ecommerce packages like oscommerce, and magento, work with quickbooks, not foss alternatives. Msft accounting works with ebay. I can not find that sort of integration with foss software.

Yes. Go to http://turbotax.intuit.com/freedom and pretend you want to file your taxes there. Understandably, you need to enable cookies/javascript. But then what happens? "Your browser is not up to date" it says. "Please install Firefox 1.07, IE 6, or Netscape 8 on Windows, or some other stuff for Mac."

Wow...please install these out-of-date or defunct browsers. So I contacted tech-support to let them know their page was broken, and they actually took the time to *link to the firefox 1.0.7* page, which says it's the most up-to-date version of firefox. When you click the download link, it takes you to mozilla.com where you can download firefox 2. *facepalm*

So after a bit of googling, I found the user agent for firefox 2 on windows (firefox 3's windows user agent *still* wouldn't work) and plugged that into the User Agent Switcher extension. TurboTax worked like a charm after that! All I had to do was lie and say that I was using Firefox 2 on windows instead of firefox 3 on ubuntu.

Or worse, they can be like TurboTax's IRS FreeFile website.
http://turbotax.intuit.com/freedom

Go ahead and try to start an account. Ok, so you need to enable cookies and javascript, no problem. Now what happens? Please update your browser to Firefox 1.07, IE 6, or Netscape 8 on windows, or something else on a Mac. Why does it matter what OS you are on if you use Firefox? I'm almost more understanding if it was IE only...at least then I'd know it required active X and I'd just use someone else.

Now install the User Agent Switcher extension, and build a Firefox for Windows profile (google it). What happens? THE SERVICE WORKS WITH (virtually) NO PROBLEMS!

dumbasses. basing their "browser compatibility" on some stupid .js that was built 10 years ago (literally...I've seen the file).

>Adobe?
Certainly not a friend, although they do benefit from open-source software. They seem like the penultimate holdover from pre-internet software companies: first-mover advantage -> de facto file and ui standard -> price bloat -> ever-tighter copy restrictions -> ?undermining open source alternatives?

Intuit?
Not a friend, although they do offer software to "open source systems"http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/2007/06-13.jhtml. I agree with you though, these commercial enterprises are _supposed_ to do everything in their legal power to profit. Just seems to me, they'll never be able to beat FOSS alternatives in the long run.

Apple?
Love-hate relationship. Opensource saved Apple's bacon. They do things like Darwin, Bonjour, and Webkit. Apple is more like the smooth-talking ex-boyfriend of opensource.

Not enemies? JBoss. MySQL. Countless others.

(Assuming you're not a troll)

Agree 100% - it's all about the apps, ask any gamer. Desktop Linux advocates hate to admit this, because it makes desktop adoption seem hopeless. Windows advocates hate to admit this becasue they like to pretend that Windows is a higher quality OS.

The following is what I think F/OSS financial software is missing. All of the following is based my limited understanding, and my opinions. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.

* Cost advantage: QuickBooks simple start is free:
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/free-accounting-software.jhtml
Or I can buy the full version of QuickBooks in only $128:
http://www.qbpro2008.com/quickbooks-2008-coupons-for-amazon/
Seems to me that any cost advantage of using a foss alternative is negligible.

* Ease of use: Somewhat debatable. But some people site this as a primary reason for Intuit's amazing success with QuickBooks - supposedly up to 92% of small businesses use QuickBooks. Although, I have to wonder how the number of foss users can be accurately counted?

* Integration with online banking: my understanding is that only intuit or msft products can easily integrate with online banking. Not absolutely sure about that.

* Payroll: very regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.

* Taxes: somewhat regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.

* Wide acceptance: I think most businesses are much more comfortable using products that are accepted standards.

* Wealth of available add-ons: Intuit has a very active community of 3rd party developers. You can buy practically any kind of an add-on you can imagine. These add-ons cost money, but at least they are available.

* Major company: I think a lot of businesses are not comfortable with a product unless there is a major company behind that product. I have to admit, even I am not comfortable with software products that are essentially one man operations.

* Support: I can always hire somebody who knows quickbooks, or find a "ProAdvisor" consultant, or I can get support from the company, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of developers who specialize in developing for quickbooks. I can not see where that is true for any project.

* Training availability and costs. I can hire people who already know quickbooks. If I hire somebody to work on some foss alternative, then there will be a significant training expense. Of course, there is also the issue of training availability.

* Documentation: If I had to pick one thing that kills the usefulness of more foss projects than anything else, this would win in a slam-dunk. Of course, this varies among projects, some foss projects have great documentation. But, I can always find plenty of books, or other documentation for popular proprietary financial apps.

* Many accountants, maybe as many as 200,000, use QB and recommend it to their clients. Some accountants will charge much more for files that are not in QB format.

* QB has much better 3rd party integration. For example, ecommerce packages like oscommerce, and magento, work with quickbooks, not foss alternatives. Msft accounting works with ebay. I can not find that sort of integration with foss software.

Or you could just install this

http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/2007/06-13.jhtml

And of course any subpoena, court order, or National Security Letter presented to Intuit has full access to all your data, including aggregation (database "join" on SSN, phone, address, etc.) with various data brokers who market their services aggressively to Department of Homeland Security, etc. With the IRS itself you have some protection; with the e-file cabal you nave none.