Open Source Tax Products?

sub7 asks: "That time of the year is upon as again: Tax Season. Those of us living in the U.S. are busy fumbling with various forms with awkward names and meaningless garble on them. Being a lazy BOFH, I went to H & R Block to see how much it would cost for them to prepare and file my taxes. They estimated -at least- $175, if not more! I knew it was cheaper to buy some software to handle my taxes. So I headed down to my local office supply conglomerate and picked up Turbo Tax 2004 Premier for $69.99. Being an OSS user for nearly 6 years I have never even considered an OSS tax solution product (probably because I ph34r t4x s34s0n!). So I turn to Slashdot to ask: Are there any projects equivalent to Turbo Tax or the other tax products out there for the OSS community?"

Comments

Anybody with half a clue...

[dills]

Anybody who invests five minutes in researching this will find that no, there aren't any OSS tax solutions.

Why?

They aren't needed.

If you go to irs.gov, they will link you to several services which will enable you to prepare and electronically file your taxes online, completely free of charge. Most won't file your state taxes for free, but then, many states allow you to file for free on their own website.

I didn't pay a dime this year, and I didn't have to print out any forms. And yes, I have a reasonably complicated tax return.

Re:This dpesn't seem likely

[OAB_X]

I doubt that anyone finds doing stuff like that fun. At least TurboTax has people who are paid to read tax law, it removes some of the pain from their jobs and there is the incentive to not mess up otherwise they loose it. [their jobs].

Even if there was an OSS product, I dot know if I would trust it, comercial software is still better in some cases, and this is one of them. If you get audited by the IRS/CCRA and it was because of the software, who are you going to sue? sourceforge? freshmeat? not likely.

Thats my 2c.

Why?

[duffbeer703]

Why would you trust volunteers to produce tax software? If the software miscalcuates something or the programmers misinterpret some arcane IRS ruling, you end up being liable for the mistake -- which could cost you thousands of dollars.

Now if TaxCut or Turbo Tax has a defect like that, the company agrees to assume responsibility for calculation errors.

TaxCut Deluxe is $25, and the state version is $20 with a $20 rebate. If you don't want to spend the money, you can easily use a spreadsheet & calculator to figure your taxes, and waste 5-6 more hours in the process.

Would you want to use an OSS tax program?

[Myrrh]

One of the things I like about TurboTax is the peace of mind. The company itself certifies that your results are correct, and will even litigate on your behalf if you run into trouble because you used their program.

Would an OSS tax software project have deep enough pockets to provide the same sort of guarantees? Because I think for many people to place their trust in an OSS tax preparation package, they would have to have some assurance that the results weren't going to either get them audited or thrown in prison.

Perhaps if there was a CPA out there who could also hammer out code ... anyone?

Re:This dpesn't seem likely

[antifoidulus]

Plus there is the whole topic of indemnity. Even though the EULA probably covers there asses, if TurboTax fucks up, chances are they will cover their ass and help you out. If OSS screws up, well all you can say is sometimes you get what you pay for....

Absolutely, Insanely, Mind-Bogglingly Complex

[American AC in Paris]

Take a quick trip through some of the IRS' 1400 PDFs. You'll find over 400 megabytes of tax forms and instructions.

The tax code is updated every year.

Unless you're looking at a fairly trivial tax calculator, trying to write and maintain an Open Source, Community-Driven tax program would be a positively Herculean undertaking. It'd dwarf the Mozilla and Apache projects. If you are looking at a fairly simple tax program, then you can probably wrap your taxes up by hand in the time it takes to download, install, and do your taxes on your PC.

What's more, code errors and oversights can mean audits, overpayments, smaller returns and penalties for your users.

Re:This dpesn't seem likely

[Methuseus]

It's really too bad our government has turned into a for-profit business. They wouldn't create something like this just because of the fact that they don't see enough of a return on their investments of time and money in creating the application.

Re:Just do it!

[American AC in Paris]

Friend, if everyone could take their one W-2 form and fill out the 1040 EZ in the comfort of their one-bedroom apartment, do you really think companies like H&R block would be in the business of helping people out with their income taxes?

I've got small business income, two mortgages, interest income from my bank account, a W-2 from my day job, a W-2 from my wife's old job, and the unreported student stipends my wife receives as a grad student. You figure out how to file long form with a dozen-odd extra schedules tagged on in under an hour, by hand, and you've got yourself the single most profitable invention/business plan known to mankind.

Kids: Remember, don't take tax advice from a guy who thinks it's OK to just not do your taxes if you're not a government employee. We have a name for people like this. They're called "future inmates".

Gov Should Release 1040 XML

[4of12]

I slogged through the instruction booklet for a weekend, reading, entering numbers, etc. and agonized went I got diverted into ancillary worksheets hidden in the booklet. Talk about stealth bureaucracy!

But think about the Line by Line process of filling out the tax form. It's just a bunch of notices and instructions which could naturally be recast into any programming language that can print out a descriptive text, accept numerical input values and do simple arithmetic.

Most of the entries could be answered with "This doesn't apply to me - enter zero." as default answers.

In the longer run, releasing a programming language version of the tax form makes sense because the same 1099 forms that are sent to the IRS electronically could be made available to you as you fill out the form (assuming you can identify and authenticate yourself).

No, it shouldn't be SomeVendors closed proprietary solution..

The IRS should release the 1040 form in XML.

There are some things worth paying for

[sterno]

In the end, I do not believe that it's realistic for there to be a good quality open source tax program. The big problem is that a huge amount of the work that goes into something like TurboTax is done by professional tax accountants and attorneys. This is not the sort of thing that could be rolled together by a small independent effort.

I could see it as a possibility as a collective effort by a few companies. If there were enough organizations that saw a benefit in having an open source development effort, then they could put together the resources to do it. Having said that, who would benefit from free tax software? Certainly not intuit, or H&R block, or pretty much any tax accountant on earth.

Maybe the IRS could sponsor something like this, but realistically it's far more efficient for them to let TurboTax be the de facto standard. The price for TurboTax is very reasonable compared to the cost of an accountant, especially if you use the web version of their software.

Is it possible to mod the whole topic Funny?

[silicon not in the v]

The obvious answer to this is "No". And I really loved the comment where someone said "What about this?" and gave a link to freshmeat that had a bunch of useless stuff that was quickly debunked.

As you may recall in many discussions of the pros and cons of switching from Win to Linux, tax software is always on there. That and the lack of games are the really big software holes that may not be filled for quite a while. The only reasonable solution available (or soon to be) is probably online versions of it through TurboTax.com. Hopefully they are web compliant enough that they can run on other browsers than IE.