• The Real Reason Taxes Suck (And Why They Don't Have To) - Adam Ruins Everything
    6 replies, posted
[video=youtube;vGVK4ibMI-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVK4ibMI-Y[/video]
Return free filing only really works if you have minimal deductibles. That would work for most people who are standard employees, but anyone operating as an independent contractor or anyone who owns a business would still have to do a lot of manual filing. I'm still surprised that there has not been a bigger push from the open source community to create some halfway decent free tax software. A lot of the stuff is trivial to automate, and some basic scripting extensions could be configured to automagically pull information out of databases/excel for the business use.
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;52795143]Return free filing only really works if you have minimal deductibles. That would work for most people who are standard employees, but anyone operating as an independent contractor or anyone who owns a business would still have to do a lot of manual filing. I'm still surprised that there has not been a bigger push from the open source community to create some halfway decent free tax software. A lot of the stuff is trivial to automate, and some basic scripting extensions could be configured to automagically pull information out of databases/excel for the business use.[/QUOTE] probably because the security risks from an open-source software could be absurdly difficult to circumvent especially if you're an average joe. not saying one or two companies are better, just that you put a lot more stock in a company that you pay money for, rather than something made for free or non-profit. especially software that, if done incorrectly, could leave you with tons of fines.
Security through obscurity is not actually security. Open source software that is extensively used get's very thoroughly audited. There's a reason why the crushing majority of the internet backbone runs on unix/linux. And besides. The security angle is kind of moot. For a standard tax return the program wouldn't even need to go online, except possibly for electronic submission. There aren't that many vulnerabilities to exploit in a program that doesn't connect to the internet.
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;52795143]Return free filing only really works if you have minimal deductibles. That would work for most people who are standard employees, but anyone operating as an independent contractor or anyone who owns a business would still have to do a lot of manual filing. [/QUOTE] Wouldn't it be just as hard for a contract worker in current US environment? If you're in a similar position you'd be smart to hire an accountant to do it for you.
Open source doesn't even mean not paid-for either. When we're talking taxes, I think an open-source company could make quite a bit from businesses and dealing with banks. Btw integration with banks would be fantastic too. In Estonia for example, the government works closely with banks so that when people want to do their taxes, they just open their bank website and take a glance through what was automatically created and then they're done. Although that would be pretty difficult to do with our states. edit: googling it I did find one open-source tax software. [URL]http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/[/URL] God knows why they narrated their videos using TTS though. It doesn't seem to automate as much as say, turbotax. But someone might find this useful.
Yeah, enterprise support contracts are the backbone behind a lot of the good open source projects. Red Hat is probably one of the premier examples of that.
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