Excel Routines to Calculate Federal and State Taxes?

TurboTax and TaxCut (among others) have such libraries disguised as tax return preparation software.

Sure, but that's a lot of overhead to carry around when you want to do rough and dirty calculations.

As if Excel and a library of functions is not a lot of overhead?

Similar questions have been posed here before, as well as your recent query over in microsoft.public.excel, and the answer always comes back as follows: it's not profitable to spend the time creating and selling such software given what already exists in the marketplace for generic tax preparation. And unlike some other types of software development, where you can get very valuable products at no cost, tax functions in Excel just don't seem to be something that anyone wants to do for fun or as a commercial loss leader.

-Mark Bole

I was friggen annoyed this year when 2008 disk Turbo tax would not let me do a second tax return with sending them another $10. I was trying to estimate 2009 taxes.

Why limit yourself to Excel format? Found

is open source software, though I haven't tried it myself. Theinput will be a text file describing the above input parameters, andthe output will be the tax. But it only does a few states, CA, MA,NJ, PA, NC, NY, VA, and OH. If you can find an online tax calculatorthat does all states, you can use that, though it will take sometechnical work, such as automating a web service request. But it getscomplicated. What about the federal tax deduction for state taxwithheld?

which is open source software, though I haven't tried it myself. The> input will be a text file describing the above input parameters, and> the output will be the tax. But it only does a few states, CA, MA,> NJ, PA, NC, NY, VA, and OH. I guess I'm wrong about the availability of tax prep code for free from developers/hobbyists. It seems to be missing a lot (Sched E? AMT? Child/Dep Care Credit?), however.

-Mark Bole

My copy of 2008 Turbotax allowed me to electronically file 5 federal returns with no additional charges. I have not yet reached a limit on paper copy returns and I've done several including "what if" analyses.

I don't use Turbo Tax. How does it know that you've already done a return? Is there a cookie on your computer that you can delete, or do they connect via internet to Turbo Tax to see if the disk has been used before?

You must have never updated the software. They removed the fee for printing additional returns on January 6, 2009. If you updated anytime after that, it would not ask you for the additional payment.

Bob Sandler

If you can use the CD ROM out of the box, I do not see how you can be stopped from doing as many paper tax returns as you wish.

I can see you might have problems updating if you have to use the TurboTax website for that purpose. You might also have to buy a separate ROM for the state.

The bottom line is that the CD ROM cannot remember anything. If you wipe out all files relating to TurboTax, you can then reinstall it as many ties as you want, but you may not be able to get it updated.

Bill

This may not work. First, a general piece of software may not let you run directly off the CD, and you would have to install it on your hard drive. Second, the software may let you run off the CD, but will make use of your hard drive. The software will store the fact that you've already done a return somewhere on your hard drive. Maybe in the registry or some more secret location. You can download many shareware programs, which are free to try for 10 days. On the 10th day uninstall the program, then reinstall it. It magically knows that you've already installed the software once before and used it for 10 days. So I'm sure Turbotax could do a similar thing. The only way is to wipe out your hard drive, then reinstall the operating system and everything else and tax software again, but that's just too much work. Even that might not work, because software may be internet enabled behind the scenes. For example if you install on your computer and do a tax return, it could connect to the central server to download the latest updates to the software and also store, on the central server, the fact that your computer software program with license number LIC1234 has been used to do a return. So if you use the program to do another tax return, it will first ask the central server if L1234 has already been used to do a return. So in short, I have no idea how Turbotax works, but there's no guarantee that running off the CD ROM will work.

Some software titles incorporate an activation scheme that disables one or more functions until an encrypted registration key has been received from the publisher's server.

Forgive my replying to my own post, but...

I checked out another interesting tax software concept today:

"Self-Calculating IRS Forms pdf forms downloaded from IRS with calcs added"

This site

has posted 2008 files for free. It's just as advertised, you fill out key lines on the form and various other lines auto-calculate. I briefly played around with 1120S form, and it worked OK. It also includes the forms I noted as being missing in the product referred to above. Standard disclaimers apply (I didn't notice any viruses, and I don't get paid anything for writing this).

-Mark Bole

Interesting that they can modify copyright-free government produced forms and license them for sale.

People can sell almost anything. I've seen Publication 17 produced and sold - and they even claim to copyright it. But they can't actually protect it dispite what they claim.

they can certainly protect their modifications (to they extent the modifications constitute copyrightable subject matter).