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The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system updateThe exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system updatePosted Jan 14, 2009 4:52 UTC (Wed) by mcopple (guest, #2920)Parent article: The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update
FWIW, it really isn't necessary to write code to build tax forms (for the U.S., at least). All the tax forms are freely available from the IRS, and several office supply stores sell laser-compatible forms (that usually come with their own primitive Windows-based software to fill in).
When I was treasurer of a small church, I used this proprietary software to build my 1099's and my W-2's. I printed a report off of Quickbooks and used that to fill in the boxes in the software, loaded the forms into my laser printer, and printed.
Therefore, all we really need to do is figure out what items need to go into each checkbox, and how to print those items in the appropriate spot on the form, using our own free software instead of the proprietary utility sold with the forms. No one needs to design a fully-functioning, printable 1099; they only need to design a template that can print the data on a pre-printed 1099 form. That is much easier than designing a form from scratch.
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The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update Posted Jan 14, 2009 5:47 UTC (Wed) by thyrsus (subscriber, #21004) [Link]
Seconded. The most common U.S. tax forms don't change that much or that often, and they're available as PDFs. The North Carolina tax forms are available as PDF as well. Once upon a time, not having easy access to a typewriter, I filled out some North Carolina forms by hand editing the Postscript version of them to fill in the blanks with my information.
(N+1)^N Forms for Small Business. Posted Jan 15, 2009 2:23 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
Its the vastness of the forms that makes the issue a hard one compared to Klingon ports of OpenOffice.
1) Country Level Forms (US, Canada, UK, etc).
While the forms do not change a lot, there are constant changes in what new forms and parts must be counted or may not be counted per area. And then you get into cross filing. A person works for you in a state. You may need to collect sales tax from every sale in that state because you have a point of presense in that state (while in another state you might not).
Or the fact that if you provide a cell-phone to an employee that is considered a taxable benefit which requires you to add that to certain forms and not others.
The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update Posted Jan 14, 2009 17:06 UTC (Wed) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
There is a discussion at the Open Tax Solver (OTS) forum on these issues:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1217472&...
With automatic PDF tag extraction and PDF form filling combined with the OTS logic, I think the tools are in place now to attack the tax form problem.
Cry
The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update Posted Jan 14, 2009 21:45 UTC (Wed) by adamgundy (subscriber, #5418) [Link] the sourceforge thread eventually leads to this: http://www.myown1.com/linux/pdf_formfill.shtml which is a nice description of how to use pdftk to fill in the fields on a 1040.
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