7 ms·

Open Tax Solver

128 points by cdjk 5y ago

joelbondurant 5y ago
Helping extortion sector low life degenerate terrorists is trashy.
zactato 5y ago
I want it to use deep learning algorithms so that it could produce a tax return that, emotionally, seems real, but in reality is just a bunch of eyeballs mixed blended with FSA rules.
johnwheeler 5y ago
Might consider getting it off ad-ridden sourceforge to lend credibility to an otherwise nice looking project
- rus20376 5y ago
  ...or maybe it's better to have simple ads supporting a straightforward code hosting site rather than allowing your code to be ingested into some AI model, or whatever other hidden uses, and used against your will by Microsoft?
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    you know sourceforge has inserted adware into downloads before, right?
    - jamestanderson 5y ago
      To be fair, that was under different ownership. One of the first things the new owners did after the acquisition was to stop that practice. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
      - amenghra 5y ago
        Imho their reputation is burned. People don’t pay attention to ownership changes or the fact that they stopped that practice (especially since they haven’t redesigned the site much, still looks and feels like the old crap).
        Supermancho 5y ago
        > People don’t pay attention to ownership changes I paid attention when MSFT bought Github.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        OT: Why is every company's response to "deceptive ads that sneak in via programmatic ad exchanges" (AKA: every ad ever) to review some subset of them, after they're already displaying them, instead of ads requiring approval before they are ever displayed like they should?
        the_pwner224 5y ago
        Because that's not as profitable.
  - milbertson 5y ago
    GitLab is open source and has no ads. It's relatively popular, you can learn more about it [here](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com)
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      Not all projects have the resources to self host GitLab CE. Actually compute resources may not be much, but keeping it up to date with security patches can be burdensome.
      - jackson1442 5y ago
        gitlab.com has no ads either, and does not require hosting GitLab CE.
        CameronNemo 5y ago
        The parent comment explicitly said "open source", which only CE qualifies as. But yeah GitLab.com is a great source available host/forge. I use it for my projects :).
      - jfrunyon 5y ago
        Dunno why you got downvoted. Some FOSS projects have zero server resources, and GitLab updates are... well... let's just say I had to turn off automatic updates for our instance at work because of how frequently they broke it, meaning I have to manually update it every few weeks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ludamad 5y ago
The mathematical part of me thought this tackled some optimization problem with trade-offs related to taxes. Cool software nonetheless :)
unpopularopp 5y ago
I never understand the text-to-speech guide videos. It's a huge turn off for me, like "oh maybe I won't use this software rather". idk why really, but it just feels so wrong. Also I know it's money, pennies, but Amazon Polly is kinda good and with a few minutes of EQ touch up you can make it 100% better than the default OSX/Windows text-to-speech
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Indeed, I generally associate those videos with low/0 effort YouTube content farms trying to make a quick buck on ad revenue.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  Same, I would much rather have no audio. Or, better yet... just record it yourself, or find a friend willing to.
throwbigdata 5y ago
Does it calculate or solve?
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
WTF, the only version you can download is the Linux version. The page says Windows/Mac/Linux, but there's no way to select one: https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver
rus20376 5y ago
This is my favorite kind of Open Source project! It's obviously a labor of love and it has a wide impact. Truly this is for the greater good. The icing on the cake is that there is a nice TO DO list guiding new contributions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ramesh31 5y ago
This is fine I guess for a simple 1040 filing, but I've never seen anything open source that can handle importing and calculating profit/loss for hundreds of day trades across multiple brokerages with wash sale logic. TurboTax for all its warts is still a godsend to me and far cheaper than an accountant.
- sytelus 5y ago
  If you are relying on Turbotax, you are making a big mistake. I think they have stopped improving it much and now just "milk the cow" mode. I can think of 10 thousand improvements but each year they are same old same old. So I went to a very competent CPA just to double check if TT was maxing out. It turned out that I was losing significantly in TT. For example, TT did not identified wrong cost basis that often comes from the brokers like Fidelity. CPA noticed them in a second. TT also failed to make sure I was saving on taxes paid to state by various channels. If you are giving IRS more than $10K in taxes, it is worth finding and hiring a CPA who often charges less than $500.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > can handle importing and calculating profit/loss for hundreds of day trades across multiple brokerages with wash sale logic Excel? Seriously, that sounds like a pretty simple spreadsheet to me. (Although you probably don't want to actually do it in Excel, 365*"hundreds" is a lot of rows)
amelius 5y ago
I hope it is written in a pure functional language, because this seems like the perfect application for it.
- junar 5y ago
  It's written in C. You can see the code here: https://sourceforge.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo/HEAD/tree/trunk/OTS_2020/src/ https://sourceforge.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo/HEAD/tre...
jnsie 5y ago
How does it handle crypto? So far the tax solutions I've seen are cost prohibitive, getting quickly more expensive as the number of transactions being tracked increases.
- sytelus 5y ago
  Why is crypto so special? Don't you just report realized gains as investment income and let the tax software do its thing?
  - itake 5y ago
    How do crypto concepts like lending, staking, and stable coins come into play? If someone "gives" you an altcoin (for staking or lending), is that considered capital gains or income? How do you value the "altcoin"?
  - teraflop 5y ago
    There are different kinds of "investment income". Selling cryptocurrency (or exchanging one currency for another) generally results in capital gains, for which you need to track and report each individual tax lot along with its cost basis. In contrast, if you receive a bunch of interest or dividend payments from stocks that you own, you generally only need to report the total from each brokerage or other account.
  - junar 5y ago
    A broker typically sends both you and the IRS a 1099-B reporting the details of the sale of stocks, etc. Having this form makes your tax filing relatively easy. Cryptocurrency exchanges don't necessarily issue these forms, which means that the taxpayer has to report the details themselves. In particular, the IRS wants each transaction reported on a separate row of Form 8949, which may be laborious for those with many transactions. (Note that an acceptable alternative is summarizing on Form 8949 itself and attaching details of the individual transactions separately. See "Exception 2" at https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#idm140393400093152 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#idm140393400093152)
assbuttbuttass 5y ago
Cool I always make errors when I do my taxes by hand.
angeland89 5y ago
I'm always surprised with these kinds of software I'm assuming this is like a open source TurboTax etc. Americans fill out their tax return and then the IRS checks that it's correct against? Well against their information, which they could give you in the form of a pre filled tax return you could alter if something was wrong (and both the IRS and you would be sure to have the best information for that year, then fraud check could be done primarely on those with changes, primarely over a certain sum etc. Just guessing but that's better use of tax dollars. But then again I'm in Norway and understand that I'm lucky in that sense. Here tax returns are fully automated, in 15 years I've had to perform 2 maybe 3 minor changes. Everything for salary, pension, deductibles, loans, interest, stocks, fortunes etc. Is prefilled.
BuddyE 5y ago
My gosh, all the red flags go up for me. Non SSL page, sourcefourge, yahoo email contact address. UI from a really long time ago? Then I see it was made in 2003, ahhhh ok, makes sense -- and now I'm really impressed. They have updated it every year since 2003!!

128 points by cdjk 5y ago

Helping extortion sector low life degenerate terrorists is trashy.

I want it to use deep learning algorithms so that it could produce a tax return that, emotionally, seems real, but in reality is just a bunch of eyeballs mixed blended with FSA rules.

johnwheeler 5y ago

Might consider getting it off ad-ridden sourceforge to lend credibility to an otherwise nice looking project

rus20376 5y ago
...or maybe it's better to have simple ads supporting a straightforward code hosting site rather than allowing your code to be ingested into some AI model, or whatever other hidden uses, and used against your will by Microsoft?
- marcellus23 5y ago
  you know sourceforge has inserted adware into downloads before, right?
  - jamestanderson 5y ago
    To be fair, that was under different ownership. One of the first things the new owners did after the acquisition was to stop that practice. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
    - amenghra 5y ago
      Imho their reputation is burned. People don’t pay attention to ownership changes or the fact that they stopped that practice (especially since they haven’t redesigned the site much, still looks and feels like the old crap).
      - Supermancho 5y ago
        > People don’t pay attention to ownership changes I paid attention when MSFT bought Github.
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      OT: Why is every company's response to "deceptive ads that sneak in via programmatic ad exchanges" (AKA: every ad ever) to review some subset of them, after they're already displaying them, instead of ads requiring approval before they are ever displayed like they should?
      - the_pwner224 5y ago
        Because that's not as profitable.
- milbertson 5y ago
  GitLab is open source and has no ads. It's relatively popular, you can learn more about it [here](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com)
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Not all projects have the resources to self host GitLab CE. Actually compute resources may not be much, but keeping it up to date with security patches can be burdensome.
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      gitlab.com has no ads either, and does not require hosting GitLab CE.
      - CameronNemo 5y ago
        The parent comment explicitly said "open source", which only CE qualifies as. But yeah GitLab.com is a great source available host/forge. I use it for my projects :).
    - jfrunyon 5y ago
      Dunno why you got downvoted. Some FOSS projects have zero server resources, and GitLab updates are... well... let's just say I had to turn off automatic updates for our instance at work because of how frequently they broke it, meaning I have to manually update it every few weeks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ludamad 5y ago

The mathematical part of me thought this tackled some optimization problem with trade-offs related to taxes. Cool software nonetheless :)

unpopularopp 5y ago

I never understand the text-to-speech guide videos. It's a huge turn off for me, like "oh maybe I won't use this software rather". idk why really, but it just feels so wrong. Also I know it's money, pennies, but Amazon Polly is kinda good and with a few minutes of EQ touch up you can make it 100% better than the default OSX/Windows text-to-speech

nerdponx 5y ago
Indeed, I generally associate those videos with low/0 effort YouTube content farms trying to make a quick buck on ad revenue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jfrunyon 5y ago
Same, I would much rather have no audio. Or, better yet... just record it yourself, or find a friend willing to.

throwbigdata 5y ago

Does it calculate or solve?

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

WTF, the only version you can download is the Linux version. The page says Windows/Mac/Linux, but there's no way to select one: https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver

rus20376 5y ago

This is my favorite kind of Open Source project! It's obviously a labor of love and it has a wide impact. Truly this is for the greater good. The icing on the cake is that there is a nice TO DO list guiding new contributions.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ramesh31 5y ago

This is fine I guess for a simple 1040 filing, but I've never seen anything open source that can handle importing and calculating profit/loss for hundreds of day trades across multiple brokerages with wash sale logic. TurboTax for all its warts is still a godsend to me and far cheaper than an accountant.

sytelus 5y ago
If you are relying on Turbotax, you are making a big mistake. I think they have stopped improving it much and now just "milk the cow" mode. I can think of 10 thousand improvements but each year they are same old same old. So I went to a very competent CPA just to double check if TT was maxing out. It turned out that I was losing significantly in TT. For example, TT did not identified wrong cost basis that often comes from the brokers like Fidelity. CPA noticed them in a second. TT also failed to make sure I was saving on taxes paid to state by various channels. If you are giving IRS more than $10K in taxes, it is worth finding and hiring a CPA who often charges less than $500.
jfrunyon 5y ago
> can handle importing and calculating profit/loss for hundreds of day trades across multiple brokerages with wash sale logic Excel? Seriously, that sounds like a pretty simple spreadsheet to me. (Although you probably don't want to actually do it in Excel, 365*"hundreds" is a lot of rows)

amelius 5y ago

I hope it is written in a pure functional language, because this seems like the perfect application for it.

junar 5y ago
It's written in C. You can see the code here: https://sourceforge.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo/HEAD/tree/trunk/OTS_2020/src/ https://sourceforge.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo/HEAD/tre...

jnsie 5y ago

How does it handle crypto? So far the tax solutions I've seen are cost prohibitive, getting quickly more expensive as the number of transactions being tracked increases.

sytelus 5y ago
Why is crypto so special? Don't you just report realized gains as investment income and let the tax software do its thing?
- itake 5y ago
  How do crypto concepts like lending, staking, and stable coins come into play? If someone "gives" you an altcoin (for staking or lending), is that considered capital gains or income? How do you value the "altcoin"?
- teraflop 5y ago
  There are different kinds of "investment income". Selling cryptocurrency (or exchanging one currency for another) generally results in capital gains, for which you need to track and report each individual tax lot along with its cost basis. In contrast, if you receive a bunch of interest or dividend payments from stocks that you own, you generally only need to report the total from each brokerage or other account.
- junar 5y ago
  A broker typically sends both you and the IRS a 1099-B reporting the details of the sale of stocks, etc. Having this form makes your tax filing relatively easy. Cryptocurrency exchanges don't necessarily issue these forms, which means that the taxpayer has to report the details themselves. In particular, the IRS wants each transaction reported on a separate row of Form 8949, which may be laborious for those with many transactions. (Note that an acceptable alternative is summarizing on Form 8949 itself and attaching details of the individual transactions separately. See "Exception 2" at https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#idm140393400093152 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#idm140393400093152)

assbuttbuttass 5y ago

Cool I always make errors when I do my taxes by hand.

angeland89 5y ago

I'm always surprised with these kinds of software I'm assuming this is like a open source TurboTax etc. Americans fill out their tax return and then the IRS checks that it's correct against? Well against their information, which they could give you in the form of a pre filled tax return you could alter if something was wrong (and both the IRS and you would be sure to have the best information for that year, then fraud check could be done primarely on those with changes, primarely over a certain sum etc. Just guessing but that's better use of tax dollars. But then again I'm in Norway and understand that I'm lucky in that sense. Here tax returns are fully automated, in 15 years I've had to perform 2 maybe 3 minor changes. Everything for salary, pension, deductibles, loans, interest, stocks, fortunes etc. Is prefilled.

BuddyE 5y ago

My gosh, all the red flags go up for me. Non SSL page, sourcefourge, yahoo email contact address. UI from a really long time ago? Then I see it was made in 2003, ahhhh ok, makes sense -- and now I'm really impressed. They have updated it every year since 2003!!