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Nice! I've been doing my own taxes for almost 20 years now. A few years back I wrote a little Python program like this one, and it's made the whole process much
by sigil 11y ago
Nice! I've been doing my own taxes for almost 20 years now. A few years back I wrote a little Python program like this one, and it's made the whole process much less onerous. Each year there are some tweaks to the tax code [1], and some differences in my situation, but mostly things stay the same from year to year.
My question is: why isn't there already a good opensource 1040 calculator? Does a liability disclaimer like Py1040's not cut it? Is it the extreme unsexiness of taxes?
[1] Unfortunately this does involve scanning through the relevant forms and instructions for changes over the prior year -- my kingdom for a diff...
- wiml 11y agoThere is --- I used opentaxsolver for a number of years. It's definitely un-sexy but it does the job with no fuss.
- chrisseaton 11y agoI don't know why anyone bothers with tax software, let alone writing their own. Why not just use an accountant? I send all my documents to a local accountant and he sorts it all out once a year for the equivalent of about a quarter of day's wages, and about an hour of my time to sort the documents.
- sp332 11y agoBecause I can fill out a 1040-EZ in less than an hour by hand.
- jedberg 11y agoBecause I do a better job than the accountant. They usually bill a fixed rate, and even if they do an hourly rate, they try to do them quickly to get through more of them. They don't spend the hours I do playing "what if". Sometimes certain deductions can apply in different places for very different outcomes. An example: You manage a property for a friend. You collect the rent and then send it over to them minus a small fee for yourself. You can claim this one of two ways: You can file a schedule C or a schedule E. Each has a very different effect on your final total depending on the rest of your tax situation and the other forms you have filed. For example, the schedule E increases your AGI, even though you can deduct all the rent you paid back to your friend. The schedule C does not, because only the total counts against your AGI, not all revenue. So now when you go to deduct your medical expenses, the 7.5% minimum is quite different. That's just one example of how the what-if plays into it, but only a very expensive accountant will spend the time doing those things and/or have enough experience to know how to do it right the first time. That being said, I'll probably do a bake off this year again to see if the accountant can do better than I with TurboTax.
- sigil 11y ago> They don't spend the hours I do playing "what if". Sometimes certain deductions can apply in different places for very different outcomes. Good point. Now you've got me thinking about what a simple optimizer could do given the small search space of legal inputs. Why does TurboTax even require you to play "what if"?
- jjnoakes 11y agoEverything I've read seems to imply that schedule c vs schedule e is not a choice the taxpayer makes, but is a function of the particular situation. Are you saying you believe situations arise like simple property management that do afford a choice? Could you elaborate?