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http://turbotax.com/

There you go.

Let's face it, there are a lot of people employed as accountants and I guess nowadays, a fair amount of software developers and business.

The people who this simplified "let the government figure it out and send back what they think I deserve" plan wouldn't apply to the vast majority of people who use accountants or probably even most of those who use TurboTax. They're using an accountant because they want every penny back that they deserve. Yes, I said deserve -- the legal amount.

There are already several free tax filing systems. TaxACT Online, H&R Block, The IRS, and even TurboTAX, the very company that is being slammed for allegedly standing in the way of free tax filing. If you are a die-hard, you can download the forms and send them in for the price of a stamp or two (my state forms, seven pages of paper, cost $0.70 to mail.)

I don't know what to tell you. It worked fine when I was doing my taxes--displayed the same text (albeit formatted a bit differently) that Firefox did.

3)tax software. This is a big one for this, why bother buying a win machine for something you do once a year when you can just install win on your nice mac.

They should have bought TurboTax.

IANAL, but No.
It looks like cancelling a loan as a gift is simply counted as a gift (incurring gift taxes) instead of straight income (as with an otherwise-forgiven loan). The first $11,000 is tax-free; the next $9,089,000 counts against the $1 million lifetime gift limit, and then gets gift-taxed.

So it doesn't count if the application is deployed via the web?

TurboTax Online comes out in January. Firefox support remains to be seen, obviously, but I'm not overly concerned, given FF's now-relatively-high market share.

I've been using H&R Block Online under Linux for the last four years. Works flawlessly in firefox. They even keep a hot copy your records for three years - a feature I've used a few times now, and I don't need to worry about backing them up, losing the CD, etc. Tinfoil hat wearers need not apply.

This site lists a few more I've never heard of, and, of course, Googling for it doesn't hurt either. Just make sure to pick software for the right country.

No, I doubt there are any Gtk/Mono/Java/Qt/WhizBang clients out there, but who needs them? Installed clients for such things are (or should be) a thing of the past. The web offers a relatively cross-platform, painless deployment mechanism for every OS and distro.

The other obvious advantage of the online approach is, of course, that you don't need to pay for an upgrade every year. You just pay the filing cost for whatever taxes you want to file, plus the vendor costs. I usually end up paying H&R Block to e-file my stuff and to have a human look over them beforehand, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Hope this helps.

I was in the same boat until I realized that I never actually used the information that I put in quicken. So why bother? If you must, use MoneyDance and do your taxes online at http://www.turbotax.com/.

Where have you been? TurboTax is already moving on. (I don't know about Quicken.) The software is essentially the same, but the laws, the rules, the numbers change every year. This is what people pay for, or they'd not bother upgrading in the first place!

So your saying that TurboTax DOESN'T package up a new client and sell it every year? So you can download it for free now? ohhh.. that's right.. They still charge for their client software: http://www.turbotax.com/

Yes I noticed that you can do TurboTax on the web, but that doesn't prove your point at all.. They've simply changed the client to a thin-client and also such that you pay for the software after filling it out. I don't see how this proves anything other than they are shifting their business model for ease of use of customers.

I'm sorry but this does not support that if they were to now give their source code away, that they would still be able to survive as a business.

If they take stock, they pay income tax (35%) on the value of the stock when it was given. Any gains would be taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%.

If they have stock options, they pay income tax (35%) on the difference between purchase price and and market value at the time that they excercise the options. Any gains (the amount the stock goes up after the excercise of the options) are taxed at the 15% capital gains rate.

You can even have them figure the amount you owe based on the questionnaire. I've used it for the last few years and it works great.

Yes, actually, they do.

"2. Guarantees. Accuracy of TurboTax Calculations. Intuit diligently works to ensure the accuracy of the calculations on every form prepared using TurboTax tax preparation software. If you are a registered user that has updated your Software with the most recent update available prior to filing your return and you pay an IRS or state penalty and/or interest solely because of a calculation error on a form prepared using the Software, and not as a result of, among other things, your failure to enter all required information accurately, willful or fraudulent omission or inclusion of information on your tax return, misclassification of information on the tax return, or failure to file an amended return to avoid or reduce an applicable penalty/interest after Intuit announced updates or corrections to the Software in time for you to file an amended return, then Intuit will pay you in the amount of the IRS or state penalty and/or interest paid by you to the IRS or state."

From http://www.turbotax.com/softwarelicense.html/

http://www.turbotax.com/ worked for me and Firefox on Fedora!

Read the EULA and read this, in the Gripe Log, before you buy.

You're not really buying programming there, you're buying a lawyer's time through proxy. All the lawyers I know bill out in six minute increments and earn every freakin' penny they make (and it's a lot of them), so I don't think you're going to be getting this kind of stuff for free. You could make the program free, but you'd still have to buy the advice.

That said, TurboTax for the Web is cheaper, works for everyone who only lived in one state this tax season, and will run in Firefox on Linux and Mac, so at least you don't have to use Windows if it's not your cup of tea.

Where they get you is on the use tax.

Check out some info from the Turbo Tax site:
Click Here

Turbo Tax For the Web.

http://www.turbotax.com/

Why are people talking about buying and *installing* software? Just use the freakin web version.

I've filed electronically using TTFTW for the past couple of years (both state and fed). Return goes directly into my checking account via EFT.

Cost is under $50 to file both fed and state. Can't beat it with a stick.

-Scott

God the hate tax cut crowd does not even try to look something up..

It's called taxes. If you make a six-figure income, in most states the government will take 40-50% of it. If you work hard at avoiding taxes (residing in a favorable state, using loopholes, etc.) you can generally get it down to around 25%, but it's still nothing to be sneezed at.

For a low range in the six figures this is true, but as you progress towards the richer and then the wealthy, the actual percentage of assets paid in taxes drops dramatically. And let's face it, the people making money from off-shoring aren't in the low range of 6 figures. This is because most of the money the federal government gets from the rich and the wealthy comes from capital gains tax (the sale of shares) or dividends tax. The bush tax cuts have dramatically reduced these. Also, you have to actually sell your shares or get dividends for this to kick in. If, like Bill Gates, you keep your fortune in paper, then you are not taxed at all.

Also, lately there has been a wave of corporate off-shoring (also known as inversion), where you reincorporate in a tax shelter (like the tax-free bermuda), so that you pay dramatically less taxes. It's part of the reason why 60 percent of US corporations didn't pay any taxes between 1996 and 2000 (microsoft being one of those 60 percent).

But it is dumb to say that the average Joe in the US gets no benefit if some rich honcho makes a few billion bucks from some folks in India.

Objectively true, some of that money does flow back to regular people. But more is lost by off-shoring than comes back in corporate profits, since only a percentage of the profits gets spent or reinvested inside the US.

TurboTax online is great for me with T1 at work, not so much for my Dad at rural 15,000 baud. It would be even cooler if TurboTax arrived on a self booting CD like Knoppix or PCLinuxOS, which is a Mandrake Live CD. I should not have to install TurboTax on on a hard drive every season.

...except TurboTax on my wife's laptop.

Here's a tip: next year try TurboTax online. I can tell you it works fantastically, I've been using it for a few years now.

you can't netfile from Linux yet

Turbo tax 2002 activation keys

Any company that comes out and puts something like that on their page AND THEN changes their license agreement to allow the software to be used on multiple machines is a winner in my eyes.

TurboTax claims to have a web-based application.

TurboTax for the web. You can get pissed at the TOS, but I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to my taxes.

Although I suppose I should admit to being somewhat grateful to them for taking the anti-consumer backlash DRM bullet for the industry. Without their infecting thousands and thousands of boxes with C-Dilla, the public might not have known just how evil DRM will be.

Of course, that's like thanking the burglars who drove you to install an alarm system that protected you from a devastating fire; or thanking the muggers who beat you up and put you in the hospital where the doctors incidentally went on to discover and treat a cancer.

I doubt seriously we will see Microsoft similarly apologize for the Trusted Computing platform. (At least not until that one comedian is thanking our new penguin-loving overlords.)

You should be aware of this before chosing C vs S corp.

I was impressed with the service and will contine to use it.

...and now my company keeps on asking me to truck stuff around for trade shows, saving costs and having me haul stuff around when I don't really want to be. ...So, any ideas on what I should do? I can't just say "no, i'm not going to work on the show" as that is part of my job, but i don't want to be used as a cheap frieight loader!

http://www.turbotax.com/freedom go there and do your taxes online and for free. It's for us poor people that don't really have the ability to buy three or four sports cars a year and are trying to get an education, but in the process are driving ourselves deeper and deeper into debt.

FOURTH YEAR IN A ROW!!! TurboTax offers electronic filing, combined with direct deposit, means I got my refund in 3 days! Eat that H&R.

Now that the IRS's e-file program is officially available, Intuit will have to radically change their business model for TurboTax. I completed my federal and MA state taxes online last night through TaxAct. It was quick, easy and without hassle.

There are several other IRS e-file Partners, many of which will allow you to file online for free. And if you don't qualify for free filing, you can file for as little as $4.95 for federal and $7.95 for state taxes, which is much less than the cost of TurboTax Basic Plus State, never mind the additional $9.95 cost of filing each return.
Web filing will beat out packaged tax software because it can be delivered more cheaply and is platform independent.

• TaxACT
• TaxCut
• TaxSlayer
• TurboTax

If you make a site to make money you won't.

Exactly! Which is why TurboTax Online fails to make giant piles of money every year.

Or maybe you've heard of a little thing called "internet porn"?

Well, about 12 months ago, I realized it had been a year since I'd booted Windows at all, and I wanted a few gigs of disk space back. So I reformatted the partition to ext2 and that's that. I have neither the reason nor the means to boot Windows, period. (Well, I'm sure the Win98 CD is lying around somewhere, but why the hell would I go through the hassle to install it?)

So, a new Windows finally comes along. Who cares? Who cares if the interface is new and improved? When I want a new interface, I download something interesting from e.themes.org -- and can get a new theme every day, if that's what I want. Thanks to TurboTax Online, the one reason I thought I'd have for using Windows this year disappeared. Games? Yeah, there are a few Windows-only games I'd like to play, on the other hand, Nethack is my favorite game and all it needs is 80x24, baby :-)

So there's a new Windows. Who cares? I'm a non-smoker. The new Windows is as relevant to me as a new flavor of Marlboro.

If you make under $25,000 per year, you can file your US taxes (both federal and state) for FREE electronically using Quicken on the web http://www.turbotax.com/turbotaxweb/welcome.htm. (Information about the deal is here: http://www.quicken.com/freedom/) Privacy implications at your own risk, of course.

Intuit (Turbo Tax), has a web-based version of their software. Use it on whatever platform you want!

In addition, as an insider on their electronic remote vulnerability assessment, I can tell you that they looked very clean and responded to every problem brought to their attention quite quickly, so you know they are making a positive effort towards security.

The web site is here.