In Thursday 16 July 2009, you wrote:
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
In <200907161322.00011.rschulz@sonic.net>, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Nor would I want to trust an amateur's encoding of the tax laws to guide the creation of my tax return.
While there are amateurs involved in open-source projects, there are also plenty of professionals.
This may be true, but as to the feasibility/probability of getting it right, and the consequences thereof:
In light of that, and the fact that the big players have individuals dedicated fulltime to just tracing/testing and verifying last minute changes to the tax code, there is just no way to get volunteers to meet or beat that level of effort to obtain accuracy, quality and ease of use.
While there are volunteers involved in open-source projects, there are also plenty of people that are paid to contribute. While the kernel is probably not an average example, something like 80% of contribution are from paid professionals. It would certainly be possible to have this same ratio in another project.
As much as I like Linux, I would either run a commercial package (where at least you can hide behind the idea that lots of people got a similar buggy program),
A piece of software don't have to be proprietary (which is what I assume you meant when you wrote "commerical") to have a large user base. Since "hiding behind that idea" does not actually give you legal cover, you can get the same warm-fuzzy feeling by using a popular piece of free software.
or would hire a professional to take either my paper financial data or my computer files of my financial data, and compute my taxes from that data.
There's no reason that professional couldn't use the software or even contribute to it.
To steal from Archimedes, there is no royal road to simple, easy to build and use, opensource tax software that is also accurate enough to avoid penalties and or lost deductions at a very high percentage of success.
Rarely are things worth doing very simple to do. (OT: Which is why fixing the simple bugs should be a developer priority--it's both easy and productive.) The business model here would be "freemium", like much software today (virtually all free software, facebook applications, iPhone applications, etc.). You would produce a free version and charge $19.95 to accept the "preparer's burden", plus minor additional support. You'd be able to get a large userbase (to give people the warm-and-fuzzies) and make a bit of cash to pay the developers, accountants, and tax attorneys. You'd also provide tax-professional (per seat) and enterprise-level (volume) support at higher fees. Depending on the relevant laws and regulations, you have also charge for services like e-filing that individuals cannot (or will not) do themselves with the free version. Even with all that, perhaps it wouldn't be profitable. I'm not that good at prognosticating or business analysis. The goal wouldn't actually be profitability though, it would be the availability and maintenance of the software; so, it might be best to start up as a 501(c)3. All that said, I have neither the time nor the passion for tax preparation software to start such a venture. However, I'll do any free software development at competitive rates if someone needs a paid professional for such work. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/