Tax Software for Linux?

Bob Cunningham asks: "Is there any US Federal and State Income Tax software for Linux? Normlly, I would just snag the evaluation copy of whichever Win9x product appeals to me (i.e., lowest cost). This year I'd like to try something different: Do my taxes under Linux. My initial searches have failed to uncover a single native tax package for Linux, nor even rumors of any related development being underway. Right now, it seems my only option will be to run a Win9x package under Wine, and hope it is well behaved. Is Win9x/Wine my only option? If so, are there any packages that have already been tested under Wine?" Financial software has traditionally been lacking under Linux, but I'm hoping that someone will soon step up and write something like this.

Re:How hard could it be?

Fairly hard.

I write stuff like this for work, and it's not 'hard' work, as in, brain teaser type stuff, but it's slow and tedious.

The problem is that you need to test this once done, and you either go through, meticulously, rule by rule, checking everything dependant on that rule, or you enter saved examples, and compare the values the program returns to what was generated by another program, or by hand-calculating it.

Tiny errors, especially in the conditionals (You're allowed this write-off if your wage is under X, and you're single, or married with three or more kids, etc...) are nearly impossible to catch, especially when two or more conditionals modify the same value.

It is possible to write, especially for yourself, where you can ignore certain segments of tax law, like the spousal section if you're single, but the testing involved would make it easier to just do it by hand.

Re:How hard could it be?

Technically: Easy
Truthfully: Damn near impossible
I think the people who write Kiplinger's and TurboTax are spending lots of money on lawyers and stuff to be sure they cover every possible situation and to be sure that they ask all the possible questions as far as forms that you might need to add to your base 1040.

Yes there is

PTax98 [arborway.net] is a first stab at tax software for Linux. You must have Perl/Tk installed in order to use it. Note this is alpha software, and is not recommended for doing actual tax returns. PTax98 computes the 1998 Federal 1040EZ. No other tax form is supported at present. You enter the data into the blanks and check a few buttons, and it computes your taxes. It doesn't do the Earned Income Credit yet; you can compute that by hand and enter it if you qualify. It does not produce printed output, you must copy the results to an official IRS form.

A Gargantuan Task

I have trouble filling out tax forms. I think I'm a reasonably intelligent guy. The tax forms are several orders of magnitude easier to parse through than the actual tax code, because the myriad formulas have been digested into line-based arithmetic calculations by bright accountants. The federal tax code is easily 1000 pages long, and weighs several pounds; the state codes, especially in states with strong Democratic Party support, are hardly better.

If this is to be a free software project, which most Linux software packages are, it would need CPAs on its staff, arguably 53 of them (50 states, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, federal) in order for the project to stay up-to-date. I have found precisely one Linux tax project, PTax98 [arborway.net], and it only partially does federal 1040EZ. My suggestions:

• Explore electronic, or WWW-based filing. A number of states and the feds have employed it for the more popular tax schedules. They all use SSL for security. They do the math for you server side, and you get a calculated copy in PDF format for your own records.
• Don't rely on Wine to do something critical like your taxes -- use VMWare and run Windows, or dual boot.
• Ask a CPA to do your taxes. If you have investment accounts or worse, offshore bank accounts, it's worth every penny they charge. Of course, privacy is an issue ...
• Move to Alaska -- they pay you to live there, with a revenue check ~$1000/year from the oil pipeline. Also, Internet access is pretty damn good in the Anchorage area. If you're a coder, and you like nature, it's not a bad deal. You'll still have to pay federal though ...
• Wait for Linux to have a huge user base so companies that develop tax software will port their wares.

I apologize if my libertarian tendencies are thinly veiled.


*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***

I only read the headline

No!!! Anything but that. We just can't start taxing free software. How would such a system be implemented. In my opinion this would be the sharp downfall of all progress that has been made in the Linux / Open Source Community!

Web based tax software.

Last year I used www.webturbotax.com [webturbotax.com]. It's a web/java based version of TurboTax by Intuit.

Last year it was free if you didn't want to file electronically. You went through the program with your browser, and when you were done, you download a .pdf file with your completed forms already filled out, complete with all the relevant attachments.

I of course filed electronically, which was (I think) $19.95. It was a deal for me.

Some guy named Chris

Web based apps

There are some good WWW-based tax programs that are pretty good. Most work with Linux's browsers. Last year I used http://www.securetax.com/
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Youngings consider youselves lucky

Fro9m what I've seen round here, many of the folks here were not born yet or too young to have had to endure this piece of crap :) Consider yourselves lucky!

Also consider yourself lucky that tv now plays comercials every 10 minutes or so, back then we had to endure shitty shows for a good 30 minutes before a comercial came on. Then, we could walk 10 miles in the snow (uphill [both ways]) to use the outhouse and hurry back (in 60 seconds) to resume watching TV. (AND WE LIKED IT!)

Better Solution.

Change the tax laws!
Ideally, we just get rid of them all.
'Impossible!', you say?
'The gov't need funding for *!', you say?
'No one would volunteer time or money to secure the blessings of liberty!', you say?

I say, 'Look at free software.'

Besides, the gov't could also raise revenue by charging per service. 'Simple' example: Notary services. The validation of contracts is an essential service that should be provided by our government. All credit activities (not just credit cards) are contract based. (M)|(B)|(Tr)illions of dollars move around on the basis of credit daily; it is an economic necessity. By charging for credit contract security as a ratio of the dollar amount, the government could surely raise enough revenue to perform its necessary functions. This would also discourage frivolous credit use by consumers.

Live free or die.

Web Turbotax checks user_agent

I used Web Turbotax under Windows. When I attempted to use it with Netscape on Linux, it blocked me for not using a browser on an appropriate OS. I didn't pursue setting up a proxy to pass a fake Win32 user agent. I suspect it function properly. They didn't do anything too crazy.. it seemed to be straight HTML, safe javascript and AWT Java applets.

I'm going to try a bit (a bit) harder this time and see how it goes, out of curiosity.

Of course, Web Turbotax means placing your tax info, including worksheets and calculations, on Intuit's servers. Privacy sentimentalists probably won't go for that, so a locally-executed tax package for *nix--or pure Java--still probably has a niche.

Not sure this would work well as a Free Software project, though. The research involved and the complexity of a lot of the rules might be prohibitive, especially given the undiminished amount of effort that would have to go into updates every subsequent year. To say nothing of the horror of getting the state tax forms taken care of.

I humbly suggest that the core logic of such a project be done as a set of javabeans without the aid of a relational database, so that standalone, web, client-server and other interfaces can be built on top of it, and make it comfortably cross-platform. The Unix/Linux community probably doesn't have enough programming-literate tax accountants to get this done. If it's platform-independent, there would be a better chance of something like this coming together.