Slashdot Mirror
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?"
No.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Trudging through tax law every year and coding an application just can't be fun enough to reliably get a group of coders to produce something like this with any regulartity. Can it?
Why did you buy the software? You can fill the entire thing out online and save half the cash.
:)
The site actually works flawlessly in Firefox too
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Open Tax Solver
Mexican border controls are almost certainly cheaper than $69.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
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.
adam b.
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.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
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.
... anyone?
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
Since I started having an accountant prepare my taxes three years ago there has not been a year where he did not save me far for than the small amount of money he charges to to my taxes. If you have kind of investments or run a small business then the reduction in liability from having a professional do your taxes is worth it.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
http://www.taxfreedom.com/v /app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp?
or
http://www.irs.go
for a complete list of freefile services
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".
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Yields how I've been doing my taxes for the past three years:
http://hrblock.com/goto/free
If you don't mind filling out your state paperwork yourself, it doesn't cost you a dime.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
In Brazil the government allways developed the program used to it. They even developed a Java version, so you could use it on linux.
They banned paper forms last year, and those who send all the data by internet have some advantages. I don't know all the functions Turbo Tax has, a government developed program can be better.
Many technical standards have associated with them a reference application, the operation of which is defined as the correct operation. Reference applications are a great way of resolving the inevitable ambiguities that arise in standards. IRS could publish an open source reference application that would have a high likelihood of meeting the IRS rules for nearly all tax filers, and could be used as a base of study by the commercial tax software industry.
If IRS were to adopt and publish such a reference application, then perhaps 95% of the questions that filers ask them could be answered by the application. The answers would be correct, or at least consistent. If an error were found, then the application could be corrected and everyone whose filing was affected by that error would be known and easily corrected. This is in contrast to the uncomfortably high error rate that the IRS telephone advisors have exhibited. (There many articles regarding studies of the error rate of IRS advisors, and all of those tax prep companies. I'm too lazy to find them today.)
Implementing a subset of their algorithm suitable for processing on a desktop is entirely within their capabilities. The IRS computers presently do this processing for nearly all filers. In other words, they already have a 'reference application'. It's just not public.
Such a reference application would not impact the commercial software industry, in fact it could help them as much as it would help anyone. I would expect that such an application need not have all the wysy features of a commercial tax prep product, and the commercial products might have much better tools for helping a person figure out the best strategy. Commercial vendors who want to base their product on the IRS product might or might not be be required to publish their own source, but should at least have to provide IRS with information on any errors that they identify, to allow correction by everyone.
A reference application would also be useful to IRS. It would provide a common reference point for all discussions and contentions regarding interpretation of the tax code.
There are some interesting legal questions. The majority of them would be answered by the following statements: 'This reference application is for reference by software professionals and is not intended for use 'as-is' by untrained individuals. It is applicable for the majority of individual tax filers, but not all. IRS does not guarantee accuracy and is not responsible for errors. Over- or under-payments, including interest and penalties the result from errors in the software are the responsibility of the filer, however underpayment as a result of a software error will not be presumed to be an act of fraud."
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
A trip to H&R Block will pay for itself, so long as you identify the pitbull of the office. There is always one person, usually a woman, who will really hammer away with personal zeal at getting you a big return. your $175 investment could easily pay for itself if not pocket you some phat cash.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are some major benefits to having your taxes done by a certified professional.
.agrippa.
a) If you get audited by the IRS, your tax preparer is the one that talks to them instead of you. The IRS can pick just about any reason they want to audit you, from legitimate inaccuracies/questions they have to the sky being blue that day (ie a random audit)
b) Your tax preparer, if decent, should know more loopholes in the state/federal tax structures that are apropos to you than TurboTax or even you yourself know.
c) The fees you pay to a tax preparer are write-offs for next year's taxes.
I just had my taxes done this week. It cost me $370, which is obviously a lot higher than TurboTax would be. This year I had a lot of tricky stuff including multiple jobs (some contracting), a house purchase, stock sales, etc. Considering she got me over 3000 off my federal/state taxes, I feel that its worth it. Some of the exemptions she used were totally unknown to TurboTax, which I have used in years past.
A collection of irrelevant and questionable software?
Let's see, there are 11 projects found. Let's go through them:
Open Tax Solver: "Tax preparation software for use in the US, Canada, and UK". Okay, this looks like it might be promsing. But the fact that they are trying to do more than one country in the same product makes me question it a bit at least. And I'm not sure if using beta tax software is the best idea.
Canadian Payroll: "Calculates Canadian payroll taxes". Completely useless for (most) individuals, unless Canada's payroll taxes work differently than the US and the employees have to calculate it.
Payroll Perl Modules: "A Perl API for calculating payroll taxes". See above; not what is needed.
gTaxEstimator: "Tax preparation software". Okay, holds some promise, but do you really want to use a program called gTaxEstimator for something you can be sent to prison for if you screw up too badly?
reTax: Not what is needed; it calculates sales tax.
PHP Mortgage Calculator: Not what is needed
See-Commerce: Not even close to what is needed
MX Cart: Even further away from what is needed
Vista Nova osCommerce: Not what is needed
UCan: "Performs conversions of interest to travelers between the US and Canada." Not even close to what is needed.
PTax98: Oh, good, a program that will help you with 1998 taxes.
Anyway, none of these programs at least advertise features that are even close to what a commercial tax program does. None even say that they can do electronic submission.
So I call that link a red herring.
There are already FREE (BEER) solutions to e-filing your taxes for nearly everyone in nearly every state. No OSS person is going to take on the liability or complexity of the US tax code for "fun", especially when the FREE (BEER) solutions work so well and there are plenty of better projects to which you can devote your limited time.
The federal government has forms online and they also have a "Free File" for eligible taxpayers which is nearly everybody. Check out www.irs.gov for the site and a link to a variety of supported vendors who will e-file you for free using web-based forms.
I like www.taxact.com -- they are among the federal "Free File" vendors so you can use them for free and have the Fed gov't pay for it - just make sure you start at the www.irs.gov website or you'll have to pay for it. You can file the state with TaxAct for about $10 more but realize that MOST states (like IL where I live) have online FREE tax filing as well at their state websites.
However, if you're like me and want to do it at home instead of on the web for free, you can purchase TaxAct's fed and state for use at home for $20. Their software is very easy to use and asks you simple questionaire to make sure you get all your deductions. Additionally, TaxAct isn't as bloated and is not filled with crapware (like nasty DRM that writes to your root sector on your HD) like the other major vendors have done in the past. I don't work for or have any relation to taxact, but I do like them compared to other products and I would recommend them for people who want the actual program at home versus the FREE (BEER) solutions above.
The free online products allow you to file your taxes, guarantee accuracy of computations (not accuracy of what you enter OF COURSE!), print out your taxes for a personal copy, and verify their online filing. If you need a program, you can spend $20 for a fully guaranteed tax suite and save over the $175 or $69.99 charges mentioned in the post.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Well, the Open Tax Solver sounded interesting for a minute. Perhaps it has potential in the future, but for me, for now, it and other things there are useless. I need a schedule E (3 rental properties), and the forms and worksheets for depreciating stuff. I also live in Maryland state.
I think it may be hard for an open-source program to do all of the tax code. Tax law in USA is enormously complex. It's vague in certain areas. Every rule has an exception, some of those exceptions have exceptions to them, and then even those on occasion have exceptions. Every year the law changes, so you may not get to reuse algorithms from last year.
There's also the fact that if something goes wrong, the user may be royally in trouble. Do you want someone to end up owing enormouse penalty fees or going to jail because of a bug in the open-source tax program screwed up his return? Would an open-source program have tax lawyers involved in quality checks, to verify it is correct, and to interpret the vague parts of the law? What happens if such an interpretation of a vague detail is disagreed with by the tax court?
I worked at H&R Block as a tax preparer a few years ago. I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't wan tto be involved in writing software that produces correct results for all users, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with users complaining their tax returns got sent back by the IRS and they're now facing audits and other unpleasantness. I wouldn't want to be an open-source coder possibly facing lawsuits or IRS investigations if anything goes wrong.
I am annoyed with TaxCut though. I had a question about something this program did for my tax return this year involving depreciating an item that broke and I threw in the trash, I didn't understand their calculation in this case. Their customer support refuses to answer this kind of question, using the excuse that such an answer would constitute tax advice, and they (H&R Block owns TaxCut) do not give tax advice. They told me I must go to a tax professional to get an answer to my question about their own product's calculation. If H&R Block doesn't have qualified tax professionals to answer a question about a calculation done by their own product, well, let's just say I won't be recommending this program or its producer to my friends anymore... And they have money to hire "tax preparers" and lawyers to verify the software, or at least the different software they use in their numerous offices to serve customers with.
Am I overly paranoid? Maybe. If there's guys out there that were willing and able to make a complete tax preparation product and hire lawyers to interpret things and approve results, that'd be cool. I'm just not very optimistic that I'll be able to use such an open-source product for my own particular tax situation any time soon.
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.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds