1. Preamble. I am primarily sending this e-mail HOWTO because I have used Open Tax Solver for 2 years now, and I want to share with others a "success story" and that there is a 100% open source solution to calculate taxes. (Of course, you could probably use a spreadsheet or calculator, and also have a 100% open source solution...)
Open Tax Solver will compute the US Form 1040 including Schedule A in one form, Schedule C in another form, yet does NOT have Schedule SE capabilities (but you can use a PDF manually there). Open Tax Solver also supports several state forms, including the California 540 form. For my example, I am a California resident, and I file the long form (1040, not 1040EZ) and I do itemized deductions (Schedule A), and also report some business and self-employed income (Schedule C -and- Schedule SE). If you follow a different pattern, you should be able to learn from this HOWTO but will need to read the documentation to develop your own approach. 2. Pre-requisites. Create a working directory: (mkdir ~/taxes-2010; cd ~/taxes-2010) The remainder of this document will assume the present directory is this working directory. >From the http://www.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsPublications.html site, search for "1040" and then use the browser to Right-Click and save the appropriate PDF files (for 1040, Schedule A, Schedule C, Schedule SE) into the working directory. The files should be saved as f1040.pdf f1040sa.pdf f1040sc.pdf f1040sse.pdf. You'll need these at the end... Repeat for the 10_540.pdf and 10_540ca.pdf files from http://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/search/index.aspx 3. Software Preparation. Download OpenTaxSolver from http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ and save it in the working directory Unpack the software distribution: tar xzvf OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04.tgz (If rebuilding the software from source, change into the OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04 directory and run the sh script that starts with "Build_taxsolve...") I can't help or support if your system does not build the binaries correctly, but the binaries in the distribution have worked for me. From this point on, I will assume the binaries will run from ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin - if you build and install elsewhere, adjust the instructions. 4. Make local copies of template forms. Copy the proper examples to your working directory, renaming from 'template' to 'mine' (or your name or initials or whatever you can use to remember that they contain your data). The 'template' files you are copying from are empty templates with 0's (or empty string) values in the various fields. cp OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/US_1040/US_1040_template.dat ./US_1040_mine.dat cp OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/US_1040_Sched_C/US_1040Sched_C_2010_template.dat ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat cp OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/CA_540/CA_540_2010_template.dat ./CA_540_2010_mine.dat 5. Use the OpenTaxSolver GUI to fill in the Schedule C form (if needed). ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/ots_gui ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat # enter in the Schedule C values from any 1099-misc or other business income # Click SAVE and save it back to the file you specified on the commandline then click 'Exit' -- for Schedule C, don't click the 'Compute Tax' button in the GUI, see Step 6 below 6. Use the 'taxsolve' CLI tool to solve the Schedule C dat file and save the results to an out file. ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/taxsolve_US_2010_Sched_C_2010 ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat > ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.out less ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.out # inspect the computed output values, save this file for later 7. Use Evince or Acroread to fill-in the f1040sse.pdf form (only necessary if you have self-employment income. Read the IRS document on self-employment and Schedule SE) Line 2 of this Schedule SE PDF needs the value from Schedule C computed output. This PDF needs to be computed by hand - before continuing on to the 1040 form. 8. Use the OpenTaxSolver GUI to fill in the US 1040 form. ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/ots_gui ./US_1040_mine.dat # enter in the values for form 1040 and Schedule A # note: Line27 on Page 4 and L56 on Page 9 come from the Schedule SE you calculated by hand in the PDF form (if you have any self-employment income or taxes) # When all completed, click SAVE to save the 1040 dat file back to the file you specified on the invoking commandline # Click 'Compute Tax' button. The gui will call the taxsolve CLI and write it to a new out file in the working directory. 9. Inspect the computed results less ./US_1040_mine.out * Observe that OpenTaxSolver has computed: - all necessary lines for 1040 form - Schedule D, if needed (Capital Gain/Loss) - Schedule A, itemized deductions - Schedule L, itemized deductions (if necessary) - AMT form 6251 (Alternative Minimum Tax, if applicable) - Schedule M, - Any other worksheets used to determine eligibilities - Tax from tax tables 10. Fill in the PDF forms. Use evince or acroread to open the f1040.pdf, f1040sa.pdf, f1040sc.pdf & f1040sse.pdf files (and other files if you are affected by Schedule D, L, M or AMT) Transfer the values from the 1040 output file to the proper locations in the f1040 and f1040sa PDFs. Transfer the values from the ScheduleC output to the f1040sc.pdf. Double-check the Schedule SE PDF. This part is a few more minutes of tedious work. (It would be nice of there was an application that could read the output text file and do automatic form-filling of all the PDF files.) Save the PDF files. I could get evince to edit the form values, but it failed to write out a new PDF when I wanted to save the file. Acroread worked perfectly. Print, sign and mail your forms. Repeat Steps 8-10 with the CA 540 form. (California Residents) You will need to run the CLI taxsolve utility on the CA_540 dat file (instead of clicking the 'Compute Tax' button in the GUI. I had, towards the end of the process tonight, discovered that I had neglected to include one tax line from one of my W2's that I had pre-paid last year. I basically ran steps 8-10 again, by loading my 1040 dat file, clicked forward a few pages, adjusted the value and clicked the 'Compute Tax' button. It updated all the right values. I then just walked back through my PDF file and adjusted the few locations that had changed while walking through the 'out' file. It only took about 5 minutes to adjust everything once I had noticed my mistake, and was worth about $350 to have corrected the error to receive the correct refund. It doesn't quite do the "bubble-up" approach of the commercial tax prep packages, but it is still quite usable once you get the workflow down. 11. Back-up files. When you are completely finished, you should be able to back-up the entire working directory, including the government-issue PDF forms, your data input and output files, and the OpenTaxSolver software itself. I have not tried resurrecting and re-running previous versions of the software, but the (text-file) formats are open, and the software is open source, so theoretically you should be able to repeat this process whenever you need to in the future. I plan on keeping any version of software used along with my data files. 12. Disclaimer This message is informational only on use of open-source software. No tax calculation advice is implied by me. If you have doubts of the accuracy of Open Tax Solver, or suspect an error, you may wish to re-compute your tax using another method, or consult a licensed tax professional. There is no warranty or implied expectation of performance of this software or HOWTO document. _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
