[lug] Escaping TurboTax to Open Source?

[Warren Sanders]

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Chip Atkinson wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Elyse M. Grasso wrote:
>> t's getting to be that time of year again... I've used TurboTax for
nearly 10
>> years, but reports are that Intuit is getting farther and farther from
>> supporting opens source.
>>
>> I don't want to maintain a web-connected Windows box just to do my
taxes. Last
>> year I tried using a VMWare windows image, but TurboTax refused to update
>> there, so I had to fire up an old Win2k box.
>>
>> I don't want to upload my financial data to a web-based tax prep site.
>>
>> Are there any tax prep options (with state support) that a
> LOL!  Here's one for you: http://www.arborway.net/koch/
>
> In the past I've used win4lin, which worked pretty well.  I'll probably be
> using vmware, which you can download for free, and install TaxCut on it.
>
> I like TaxCut myself since it's cheaper than TurboTax and seems to do a
> decent job.
>
> Chip

Sorry to bring up an old thread.  I just got around to doing my taxes
and wanted to share a bit of my experience.  I have done my taxes
online with TurboTax in Linux since the year you could do this.  A
couple years ago I had some issue with TurboTax and tried out TaxCut
and found they were just too buggy and went back to TurboTax.  Every
year I notice cosmetic changes and such; no biggie.

This year I couldn't stand it any longer... it was painfully slow in
Firefox under Linux.  Not so with Firefox under Windows however.  But
I use GnuCash and refer back to it often so I need to do this under
Linux.

So I gave TaxCut a shot again and wow it was smooth!  It even
explained limits where TurboTax did not.  I only saw a couple flaws
such as "&nbsp" html artifacts and one major issue in their survey at
the end where you choose how you might want to be contacted by them.
There was no form box for phone or email but only for physical
address.  At any rate, one of my comments I submitted to them was a
thank you to making it Linux friendly.

Today unfortunately they seem to have tightened the bolts down; I was
consistently being referred to their compatibility page being
shunned.  This gave me a prime opportunity to use my User Agent
extension in Firefox with success.  I guess I thanked them just a bit
too soon.

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Warren Sanders
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