3 ms·

Really amazing we haven’t created an open source tax software yet.

• the_arun 6y ago
  Tax preparation & downloading forms to print is free. All these products charge customers for electronic filing.
  • istjohn 6y ago
    And you can even electronically file with the IRS's Free Fillable Forms.
    • tacomonstrous 6y ago
      That's explicitly not an IRS product, though the IRS does a lot to obscure this fact.
  • woobar 6y ago
    CK Tax doesn't charge you for Fed or State eFile.
    • dwighttk 6y ago
      As far as I can tell credit karma makes money by referring people to credit cards and other financial instruments. Their emails are easy enough to ignore.
• sdinsn 6y ago
  Tax law is complex and change frequently, it would have to track 50 states + federal tax law.
• triceratops 6y ago
  Not at all. Open source software usually falls under 2 categories: 1. Passion projects by passionate individuals 2. Released by companies to burnish the rep, improve recruiting, or reduce maintenance costs by sharing them Laboriously writing tax rules for 50 states + federal the government can't possibly be any programmer's idea of fun. And the software has economic value so a company wouldn't write and open-source it, unless you can find a complement[1] to tax-prep that's even more profitable. 1. https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    You forgot: 3) created by people to automate repetitive or expensive tasks for themselves. I’d be interested in supporting the project because I do my taxes every year and it’s a laborious process. No reason to capture 100% of the tax code. An 80/20 solution would be great.
    • triceratops 6y ago
      Depends on what the 80% covers. Tax prep is something that you have to get right because of the legal consequences.
• HeavenFox 6y ago
  https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/ although I never tried it myself