JTax aims to be a flexible, open source tax preparation framework,
allowing for pluggable modules for specific tax locales. The
initial implementation will be for the US federal income tax form
1040 and its common supporting schedules, with the ability to load
state-specific tax modules. The idea was inspired by the Open Tax
Solver, another sourceforge.net project, and I intend to support
the input and output formats of that project at least in
import/export, if not natively. JTax will start out as a simple
command-line interface; down the road we’ll add a GUI, and then
(if not before)…e-file, anyone? I realize that’s ambitious, and
will probably require me to have some server-side processing in
place somewhere, but I’ve looked through a good bit of the IRS’s
documentation and I don’t think it’s out of the question. More on
that later.
I’m also aware of LinuxTax.com and its sourceforge project,
tenforty. I have not yet looked into their code or xml structure
yet, but if they have something workable I’d be open to supporting
their storage format. However, they’re at pre-alpha and don’t look
to have been active for several years, so I’m not sure where that
will end up.
Wishlist (or, things I would love to accomplish Down The Road):
– Creating printable, fileable forms
– Interoperability with existing commercial data formats, including
.qif
– The ability to download W-2 data from various commercial payroll
providers
– E-file
E-file is probably the biggest challenge here, I think, because the
federal government seems to delight in obtuse documentation. From
my initial perusal of the IRS’s publications, I don’t think an
open-source e-file solution is out of the question. I have not yet
found anything indicating any prohibitive fees involved, for one.
They do have very restrictive regulations involving application,
approval, testing (they have a pretty thorough testing data set
that you have to be able to fully submit accurately before being
approved to go live), and production filing. I think I caught
somewhere that you can only connect to their servers from a limited
set of IP addresses, and in batches of a certain size (I think),
which is why I said earlier I think I would need something on the
server side in place to do the handoff. Which fact introduces all
manner of additional challenges (paying for an SSL cert, for one).
Oh, and I think the testing-approval process has to happen every
year given various changes in tax laws.
But as I said, this is down the road. For now, I’d just like to
get something client-side and functional in place.
Jtax has no relation whatever to the “JTax” component of ParkerWare’s
“JRTax” Product (http://www.parkerware.com/) for computing employee
net pay after fedeeral, state, and local taxes.