Programming a UI or calc engine for U.S. Income Taxes?

Has anyone else given any thought to programming a user interface or calculation
engine for filing anything like the U.S. personal income taxes?  Some of its
goals might be:
(1) optimized user input interface;
(2) easy user navigation through the data and calculation paths.
(3) capability to output the standard forms
(4) ability to support what-if modeling.
(5) straight-forward maintenance and extension paths 
and a lot more.
--JohnH

"John Herbster" <herb-sci1_AT_sbcglobal.net> wrote
Has anyone else given any thought to programming a user interface or
calculation engine for filing anything like the U.S. personal income taxes?
Some of its goals might be:

How does what you're considering differ from what's out there? TaxCut,
TaxAct, TurboTax, etc.?

bobD

"Bob Dawson" <bdawson@idtdna.com> wrote
> How does what you're considering differ from what's out there? TaxCut,
TaxAct, TurboTax, etc.?

I have been using and am unhappy with TaxCut and TurboTax, as well as the IRS
forms.  My taxes are rather simple, yet my official return consists of 61 pages,
21 of which are Schedules D and D1.  TurboTax Home & Office does import the
Sch. D stock trades from my financial institution.   TurboTax gives you two ways
to view the data, both of which are through a small, scrolling, impractical
peep-hole view.  There is no way to sort the data different ways.   And the IRS
layout of its Schedules D and D1 are an extreme example of legacy inspired
stupidity.

Another problem is the inflexibility of using TurboTax to do what-if planning. 
I would like have a graph of taxes verses the amount that I might withdraw from
an IRA.  TurboTax cannot do that or anything like it. 

Our personal income tax system has gotten so complicated that very few of us can
prepare the required annual "return" ourselves.   And it continues to
be come more complicated; and as it does fewer and fewer returns will have the
IRS forms being directly filled out or even looked at by humans.   So a related
exercise would be to use such a system to help plan changes that would allow the
complexity of the IRS regulations to continue to increase w/o using the existing
forms. <g>

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:58:09 -0500, John Herbster wrote:

> Has anyone else given any thought to programming a user interface or
calculation engine for filing anything like the U.S. personal income taxes? 
Some of its goals might be:
> (1) optimized user input interface;
> (2) easy user navigation through the data and calculation paths.
> (3) capability to output the standard forms
> (4) ability to support what-if modeling.
> (5) straight-forward maintenance and extension paths 
> and a lot more.

Like TurboTax? I think its been done once or twice.

We've done something similar, i.e. the forms and calculations, but not
the navigation: http://jfs.ohio.gov/ohp/bltcf/acrweb.stm
Basically each field/cell has an ID number (I believe that the IRS
provides these for the tax form). 

We kept all the data completely separate from the UI and set up a
model where changes would automatically propagate (we use delayed
calculation) and listeners could be attached to each field.
There is one file which defines all the fields, types, descriptions,
hints and formulae. We used a more or less standard expression parser
and added custom functions where necessary.
We also had to handle the situation where groups of fields can be
repeated (i.e. tables) and to handle nested tables.

All the forms and reports were designed by hand since they need to
match standard government forms but we used a second file to map cells
to controls on the forms.

-- 
Marc Rohloff [TeamB]

"John Herbster" wrote

> I have been using and am unhappy with TaxCut and TurboTax, as well as the
IRS forms.

Not sure whether you're more interested in tax software or tax reform
<g>.

To me, the very complexity of the systems is simply too much for an
individual (or even team) to tackle as a hobby.

There is specialized Schedule D software available
https://www.gainskeeper.com/us/GainsKeeperIndividua.aspx

If neither TurboTax nor TaxCut meet your needs, you might want to get in
contact with 2nd story Software, the makers of TaxAct. They're a smaller
company near here that might be interested in talking about ways to beat the
big guys. They also run ads for programmers from time to time.

https://www.taxact.com/company/company_contactus.asp

bobD