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The Future of Tax Software on Linux?
mengel asks: "So this last week, I repeated my annual ritual of
trashing my scratch partition, making a FAT filesystem on it, booting Microsoft Windows(tm),
and installing tax software to do my taxes.
I had hoped, with the advent of Xandros, and of Linspire (formerly Lindows), that one of these increasingly important commercial companies would have talked someone like Intuit, or the Tax Cut guys, into developing this years tax software against Wine, so that it would also run on Linux under Wine as well as on MSWindows. So what has to happen before the companies who write Tax Cut and TurboTax will do versions that least run under Wine, much less native Linux versions? What can we do to help make that happen?"
"Tax Preparation is the only reason I boot MSWindows anymore, and each year it gets more arduous, as soon I'm going to be forced to upgrade the MSWindows partition to XP, just as a few years ago I had to upgrade from MSWindows 3.1 to MSWindows 98 -- so in effect my tax software costs me double, because I keep getting forced to buy a newer MSWindows upgrade every 3 years or so as well as the tax software."
I ran the online version of TurboTax just fine on my Gentoo box running Firebird/fox.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
"I'm the tuxman. Yeaheh, I'm the tuxman...."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You can do this on the web, using either the Tax Cut software on the web provided by H&R Block, or go to Yahoo and use their TurboTax service. There are probably others too.
\/\/oobie
Use Linux. Insist on Linux software and *buy* it when it's available.
There's no conspiracy here-- those companies do MacOS ports because Mac users make it worth their while. As long as the US desktop Linux base remains tiny and as long as most of those users can dual-boot and are willing to buy the software, what's the value for them? Especially since you know the remaining Linux core is a) going to complain that it doesn't run on Gentoo or LFS, b) berate them for not making the whole thing open-source and c) too cheap to pay for it anyway.
There is one huge upside, in that there will *never* be a good free alternative, so if a userbase exists, products will emerge.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you're getting a big enough refund to be anxious about it, your are already doing your taxes wrong by having too much withheld. You should adjust your withholding (allowances) so you get the money in your paycheck rather than in the form of a tax refund.
You're better off owing $100 or less on April 15th than overwithholding all year and then figuring out how to get that refund a few days faster.
As for the simple math required on the tax forms, what a lame excuse! Get an $18 printing calculator. Go over the numbers twice. The IRS will check your calculations and correct them anyway, and in that case you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting a reduction or increase in taxes. For small discrepancies resulting from arithmetic errors you won't get into any trouble, they'll just send a refund or a bill -- don't you think they get LOTS of those already?
If you're going to defend the big refund by saying that it's a great way to save, it's not. Set up an auto-withdraw savings plan with your bank, credit union, or U.S. Treasury in the form of savings bonds. Overwithholding is just an interest-free loan to the government, and then when the "windfall" check comes you're probably going to blow it rather than save it anyway.