[Discuss] Finance software for Linux

[jack at coats.org (Jack Coats)]

I designed and wrote a corporate tax package for a Fortune 100 company in
the late '70s.  I worked very closely with a brilliant CPA.  Together we
designed and validated it on 9 months before relational databases were
popular.  It is one of the 2 or 3 big projects in, my career.  It used IBM
mainframe for data collection and a Univac that had an early spreadsheet
system [Foresight] that allowed a team of tax CPAs to do the forms the IRS
required back when.  The CPAs could maintain and run it without computer
folks intervention.  I got Lots of flack from IT peers but it worked for a
long time.

It was the 2nd computer tax submission to the IRS.  Still had to send 5
copies of paper submission but sent a reel of tape too.

Doing a tax system can be done, but it must be maintainable by tax geeks,
not just computer geeks.

Doing this system got me to understand US taxes.  Convoluted.. Yes.
Logical.. Yes[once you dig in deep enough].  Every tax simplification act
has only added complexity.  To truly simplify we must toss out all old
rules and start the system over, not just patch on fixes.

<>< Jack
On Jan 14, 2015 8:25 AM, "Bill Bogstad" <bogstad at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Matthew Gillen <me at mattgillen.net> wrote:
> > On 1/14/2015 8:05 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> >> Unfortunately there are only a few companies in the industry who
> >> produce tax software, and they only Windows and Mac compatible, or
> >> you can use the web interfaces. This type of software does not really
> >> lend itself to to Open Source.
> >
> > Why do you say that?  Because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge
> > that typical CS majors don't have?  There are certain projects in the
> > open source world that have to pay attention to regulatory issues (e.g.
> > wireless drivers), and they seem to be able to do so.
> >
> > I suppose the tax code is orders of magnitude more complex and
> > intertwined.  I'd be curious to explore your statement a little more
> > though regarding what kinds of things lend themselves to open source.
>
> It isn't just the complexity.   It is the constant churn.  Sometimes
> because of last minute
> changes from Congress, the IRS doesn't put out final
> instructions/forms until late Fall.
> Admittedly these are usually fairly esoteric issues, but as lots of
> people have something odd about their taxes (uninsured medical
> expenses, loss due to theft/fire, consulting income, etc., etc.); any
> organization putting out tax software has to be prepared to put
> out a new version fairly quickly.   Plus the software is
> geographically restricted.   US Federal tax software might be
> adaptable to state level returns; but probably won't be at
> all useful for UK or Canadian taxes.   This just doesn't strike me as
> a problem domain that
> is very tractable to volunteer efforts.  It is also (to a great
> extent) an all or nothing problem for most users.   If tax software
> only handles 2 of the 3 forms that I need to fill out, it probably
> isn't worth my time to use it.  I'm not aware of any other free
> software (or culture i.e. wikipedia) which operates under these
> conditions.
>
> Bill Bogstad
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