JTax aims to be a flexible, open source tax preparation framework,
\nallowing for pluggable modules for specific tax locales. The
\ninitial implementation will be for the US federal income tax form
\n1040 and its common supporting schedules, with the ability to load
\nstate-specific tax modules. The idea was inspired by the Open Tax
\nSolver, another sourceforge.net project, and I intend to support
\nthe input and output formats of that project at least in
\nimport\/export, if not natively. JTax will start out as a simple
\ncommand-line interface; down the road we’ll add a GUI, and then
\n(if not before)…e-file, anyone? I realize that’s ambitious, and
\nwill probably require me to have some server-side processing in
\nplace somewhere, but I’ve looked through a good bit of the IRS’s
\ndocumentation and I don’t think it’s out of the question. More on
\nthat later.
\nI’m also aware of LinuxTax.com and its sourceforge project,
\ntenforty. I have not yet looked into their code or xml structure
\nyet, but if they have something workable I’d be open to supporting
\ntheir storage format. However, they’re at pre-alpha and don’t look
\nto have been active for several years, so I’m not sure where that
\nwill end up.<\/p>\n
Wishlist (or, things I would love to accomplish Down The Road):
\n– Creating printable, fileable forms
\n– Interoperability with existing commercial data formats, including
\n.qif
\n– The ability to download W-2 data from various commercial payroll
\nproviders
\n– E-file<\/p>\n
E-file is probably the biggest challenge here, I think, because the
\nfederal government seems to delight in obtuse documentation. From
\nmy initial perusal of the IRS’s publications, I don’t think an
\nopen-source e-file solution is out of the question. I have not yet
\nfound anything indicating any prohibitive fees involved, for one.
\nThey do have very restrictive regulations involving application,
\napproval, testing (they have a pretty thorough testing data set
\nthat you have to be able to fully submit accurately before being
\napproved to go live), and production filing. I think I caught
\nsomewhere that you can only connect to their servers from a limited
\nset of IP addresses, and in batches of a certain size (I think),
\nwhich is why I said earlier I think I would need something on the
\nserver side in place to do the handoff. Which fact introduces all
\nmanner of additional challenges (paying for an SSL cert, for one).
\nOh, and I think the testing-approval process has to happen every
\nyear given various changes in tax laws.
\nBut as I said, this is down the road. For now, I’d just like to
\nget something client-side and functional in place.<\/p>\n
Jtax has no relation whatever to the “JTax” component of ParkerWare’s
\n“JRTax” Product (http:\/\/www.parkerware.com\/) for computing employee
\nnet pay after fedeeral, state, and local taxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":218,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-219","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/219\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joel.fouse.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}