Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

NewsForge looks at Open Tax Solver (OTS), a tax application that was written by Aston Roberts. "Roberts says almost all tax software -- including popular programs such as TurboTax and TaxCut -- will calculate taxes, but describes OTS as an alternative method. "It operates quite differently from the commercial packages, which tend to be question-oriented, or interview-oriented," he says. "For some people, the interview method may be better, but others have found the direct input approach of OTS to be quicker, especially to those who have done taxes before and basically know where to put their numbers, but want to automate the math.""

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Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)

Posted Mar 24, 2006 12:47 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

I keep seeing stories about how it's impossible to do your taxes from a
Linux box... Yet, I've been doing mine from a Linux box for the last 8
years! I use TurboTax.com's online filing, from a Linux box using Firefox
(now, but old Mozilla in the past)... It's always worked just fine...
The ONLY problem I ever ran into was one year they added some really stupid
browser/platform check to their code to deliberately prevent non-supported
systems entering, despite the fact that it'd work just fine for them... But,
the good old user-agent-switcher took care of that problem easily... And,
it looks like they got rid of such stupidity anyway, because I didn't have
to do any manner of trickery this year... It all just worked without any
hassles at all... So, I don't know if people just don't know about TT's
online filing (it's not like they're exactly obscure unknowns), or just
haven't even bothered trying it from Linux, or what the deal is... But, if
I hear one more person say you can't currently (or haven't been able to for
many years now) file your taxes from Linux, I think I'll scream...

Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)

Posted Mar 24, 2006 14:46 UTC (Fri) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

Another web tax place that has worked well for me (2 years, this will be the third) is TaxACT. Last year it claimed it required Java support, but it didn't actually check, and I didn't have any problems - maybe one of their fancier/pricier packages does need Java.

I got annoyed at Turbo Tax a few years ago when the only Mac version they sold was the Deluxe, which I didn't need/want.

Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)

Posted Mar 24, 2006 15:58 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I don't see the sources for TaxACT and Turbo Tax. I don't think I can fork and improve either of them. Isn't this story about the software that if "free as in speech"? Admittedly, FOSS is a bad acronym, FLOSS is much better at reflecting the "free as in speech" part.

Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)

Posted Mar 24, 2006 16:28 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

Sure, free/open-source tax software is interesting and worth a mention,
certainly... I didn't even mean to gripe about the main point of this
particular article; I was just meta-griping about all of the references
I continually see about how it's impossible to do taxes on Linux, and how
one is forced to boot to Windoze for this one last problem we haven't
solved yet... This article, while not nearly as bad as some, still also
gives off the vibe that until these mentioned products came along, there
was no other choice at all... Yes, an open source alternative is great,
but on the other hand, I don't consider myself paying for "software" at all
when I file my taxes online via TurboTax's web site... The only software
that *I* am running is my web browser... I'm just paying them for the
service of computing, checking, and E-filing my taxes for me... And,
frankly, I don't really much care about the details of how their software
functions, as long as it does the job correctly... So, I'm not sure I
personally would see much benefit from open source tax software, since
that's not what I'm interested in: I'm interested in the SERVICE of
preparing my tax forms, checking them over, and filing them... If they
happened to be running that service on open source software, I'd have even
more faith in them, and would be even happier about supporting them...
But, as long as they do their jobs well, I honestly don't care THAT much
what they run... Nor, am I really interested in taking over their role to
become my own service provider... *shrug*

Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)

Posted Mar 24, 2006 18:48 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I always find it odd that tax software isn't designed as a generic program, with form-specific data files. Tax forms are essentially single-column spreadsheets (except for a couple of multi-column ones; MA has had a form with a table with 5 columns and a couple rows, for capital gains from different years over a period where the rates were changing), except that the form is arranged differently, and has a lot of additional page layout.

Of course, there's extra metadata related to which forms you include, which is not so strictly organized. But if you know what you're doing enough to file paper forms yourself, the work that you'd want software to do isn't really tax-specific.

(On the other hand, forms are an under-supported type of office document in general; you ideally want the program to support a document with two parts: the part that you get, and the part you fill in. That way, the recipient gets the document, checks that the part representing the blank form is unmodified from the original you got, and that the thing as a whole is valid, and can automatically pick out the entries in each field.)