[PLUG] Make some tax software...

[Rogan Creswick]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 1:09 AM, donkyhotay <donkyhotay at verizon.net> wrote:
> Except turbo tax is trying to move away from linux compatibility. There
> is another thread on this list where people are complaining about the
> flash requirement of turbo tax. Flash doesn't bother me so much (though
> I'd prefer to be without it) but I've used turbo tax online since I
> first migrated to linux about 3 years ago (and used the install version
> before that). This year though I had to use the 'user agent switcher' to
> spoof turbo tax into thinking I was running IE on windows in order for
> it to let me in.

That's odd.  I had to do that last year (when filing for 2007) but I
did *not* have to do anything like that this year (using a different
computer -- and ubuntu vs. debian).  I also did my taxes in late Jan.
though, so maybe they changed it (hey, that might not be a *horrible*
way to cut down on customer service requests.  If you're savvy enough
to install a user-agent switcher, then you probably won't have issues
printing...)

Regarding flash:  I decided that I have no grounds to denigrate flash
apps until I can trivially write a javascript UI that works equally
well on all platforms.

--Rogan

> The fact that everything worked perfectly without any
> problems using firefox on ubuntu really bothers me though. I'll accept
> the fact that many companies aren't interested in the linux market and
> don't bother making stuff for linux, but when you have something that
> *is* compatible with linux and you go out of your way to try to make it
> incompatible (and fail at that even), well... it becomes time for me to
> look for another tax service (online or not) which I did this year. I
> would have felt a little better if I had gotten an error or something
> while using turbo tax online (would have meant there was a real reason
> to not use linux with their service) but I successfully used everything
> up to the point where my taxes were ready to be filed and they wanted me
> to pay for the service, I then decided to cancel and go elsewhere at
> that point. Making a FOSS tax program wouldn't be too hard, especially
> since the USA is big enough and it would benefit so many people there
> are bound to be enough volunteers. The problem (as mentioned previously)
> is that in addition to federal taxes you have 50 states with their own
> tax laws along with the unknown number of counties/cities/whatever as
> well. All of these will change from time to time and need constant
> updating. While the USA as a whole is probably big enough to draw enough
> volunteers to keep federal up to date anything below that will probably
> not be kept current or accurate. The only way I see something like this
> working is if the FOSS community built a framework program (as mentioned
> in previous Emails) that connected to a government maintained publicly
> available database which stores information on all taxes at all levels
> of government. This way whenever taxes change due to laws being passed
> the database is just updated and the program can calculate your taxes
> correctly. This way the developers can focus on making certain the
> program remained compatible with the database and interface issues (how
> questions are asked to the user, etc.). Sadly I don't see our government
> being willing to maintaining a database like this even though it would
> help avoid confusion with understanding/calculating taxes even if you
> didn't use our hypothetical FOSS tax program.
>
>
>
> Russell Johnson wrote:
>> On Apr 15, 2009, at 10:20 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:
>>
>>> You're going to spend a lot more time and money on domain experts
>>> than you
>>> will on a programming language, particularly when you get to
>>> addressing
>>> all the state taxes and potentially the regional (i.e. TriMet).
>>>
>>
>> For several years now, I've filed my taxes with TurboTax online. On
>> Windows, Linux, and OS X. It worked a treat.
>>
>>
>> Russell Johnson
>> russj at dimstar.net
>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people insist on
> believing in windmills.
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