I’d been vaguely aware of campaigns by tax-prep companies to stop the IRS from offering its own tax-prep software. I was going over some of my old tax info today, and started to wonder if there were any open source tax-prep programs.
What I found was Open Tax Solver. I get the impression that it’s more clunky that using commercial tax-prep. Does anyone here have firsthand experience with it?
The IRS offers free tax services, you can find them under
That’s a damn fine URL. Thanks for sharing ❤️
Honestly, I’d never use open source software to do my taxes. There is no reason to and puts all the risk on me to assume all the calculations and tax rules in the software are up to date. That’s very risky. If all the risk falls on me then I might as well learn the tax system I’m filing for. If I’m not wanting to do that then I’m not paying someone to fill out my taxes, I’m paying them to assume the risk of filling them out wrong.
If I put in all my information in correctly on turbo tax and that system fails to file correctly then they are liable even if I don’t get added audit protection.
So for me, there is no reason for this software and I’d honestly discourage people from using it.
My experience: I’ve done my personal taxes myself for 7 years and my own business taxes for 5 years then hired someone to do both for the last 5 years.
I had no idea FOSS tax software was a thing. Huh. I’ll try and play around with it at some point and let you know.
There are some open source tax software around. Depending on your country’s requirements you should get by with it. It might be “clunky”, and you might have to persevere with some kind of inconvenience, but I’m of the opinion that any open-source transparent software, preferably a local installation, is worth using. The alternatives are usually hostile to you despite selling as convenient and friendly. Remember that any cloud solution is basically “someone else computer”. Would you put your most private financial information on some random person’s computer? Any assurance of security is a farce. There’s been many data breaches of tax prep corporate databases. Having said, that’s not the worst aspect of using most app based or online tax prep software. Most of them look at your data, profile you, and then sell that information (your private financial information) to data brokers! If you’re using the app you likely agreed to them doing that whether you’re aware or not. Check the privacy policy and terms of use. Additionally, many hold your records for ransom! You need to keep a certain number of years worth of records, and if you aren’t keeping a local copy for yourself they are the only source. Many will deny you your tax records if you haven’t payed for their services. It’s extortion. Something that belongs to you cannot be attained unless you pay them to give it to you. It ensures that you remain a customer forever. If you want to quit them, they know they will get years of payment out of you because you need access to your own financial documents. This is an insidious practice and I don’t know why anyone puts up with it. Find an accountant who is willing to work with alternate open source software. They exist.
The IRS has a free file program. You might want to start there. If your above those income limits then they have free fallible forms you can use. Beyond that commercial tools, the easiest thing is to go to your state site and see what they accept because that list will likely be shorter then the federal list of program. “FreeTaxUSA” will probably be on the list. That is what we use and it is worth a look. Basically free US filing, but state filing is a nominal cost. Personally I think those that use TurboTax, H &R Block, and Tax Act at this point are nuts. These market leaders are just not cost effective and unless you need some special feature they have, they make little sense. So may other choices.
The other direction is to just make up a big spreadsheet that does your taxes for your and fill in the new rates and rules every year. We also do that. Our process typically is to fill out our spreadsheet, then signin to FreeTaxUSA, and enter the data, then resolve any differences. The other place I had to have taxes is for retirement planning and so I wrote my own Python code to simulate our taxes as part of a Monte Carlo simulation.
The thing about taxes, they are quite simple for one person as we all typically have certain types of income and expenses. Writing tax code for everyone is a huge ever changing thing. Not something that FOSS is likely to be very good at just because of the time urgency and staffing factor.
By the way, thanks for the link. I’ll probably look at it at some point.
