The Future of Tax Software on Linux? 58
mengel asks: "So this last week, I repeated my annual ritual of
trashing my scratch partition, making a FAT filesystem on it, booting Microsoft Windows(tm),
and installing tax software to do my taxes.
I had hoped, with the advent of Xandros, and of Linspire (formerly Lindows), that one of these increasingly important commercial companies would have talked someone like Intuit, or the Tax Cut guys, into developing this years tax software against Wine, so that it would also run on Linux under Wine as well as on MSWindows. So what has to happen before the companies who write Tax Cut and TurboTax will do versions that least run under Wine, much less native Linux versions? What can we do to help make that happen?"
"Tax Preparation is the only reason I boot MSWindows anymore, and each year it gets more arduous, as soon I'm going to be forced to upgrade the MSWindows partition to XP, just as a few years ago I had to upgrade from MSWindows 3.1 to MSWindows 98 -- so in effect my tax software costs me double, because I keep getting forced to buy a newer MSWindows upgrade every 3 years or so as well as the tax software."
TurboTax for the web (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the software is a crutch, and it breaks (Score:2, Interesting)
[i] It beats me why an individual taxpayer who knows anything about programming would use tax prep software.[/i]
Actually, even though I'm very good with programming, high level math, etc, I screw up small calculations like that all the time. Expense and mileage reports, everything. I'd probably goof up.
The main reason I did my taxes on line, back in late Janurary or Feburary, was so I'd get my refund faster.
Doing them online, with eFile, and Direct Deposit...I got my refund in about 12 days.
As opposed to: Fill out forms, stamps, envelope, do the math, mail it all in, wait for check, take check to bank...
It does cost $9.95 or something, but it's worth it to get the money quicker. Its nowhere near as bad as the gouging on those 'instant refund' places
I Have a Dream (Score:3, Interesting)
Normally, every year at tax time, I would browse on over to TurboTax.com to use TurboTax for the web, which seemed to work just fine under Linux. Unfortunatley, this year they finally decided to start denying access to users without an "accepted browser". Up until this point, I had been very happy with TurboTax for the web. I briefly considered writing a tax return preparation package for Linux, but then decided I should probably just do my taxes ASAP because it was Apr. 14.
So, I went to Google to search for "Linux tax return software", and not finding anything of worth that was free, decided to try TaxCut.com (a part of H & R Block). They had a web based version, and it seems to be working fine with Linux and Mozilla. However, I wonder how long it will be until it doesn't, and I'm reminded of my dream: to never have to use another piece of non-free (as in speech) software again, including being able to file my taxes online under Linux.
I would still seriously like to start work on tax preparation software, but I wouldn't know where to begin, and even if I did, I don't have the time. I figure, maybe I could take courses to become a certified public accountant, try to get on the inside track for accounting and tax codes, but again time is an issue.
Anyway, that's just my story; if anyone else has the gumption to actually start a tax preparation program for Linux, let me know. I may not have the time to work on it, but I'd definitely be interested in testing and donating what little time I do have to it.