From the assortment of fantastic free software available for Linux users everywhere, you’d think we just sit around and download music, edit our killer digital pictures with ease and copy huge amounts of video content to our hard drives for quick and easy access at a moment’s notice.
And we never, ever, never file taxes.
Currently, there is no commercially available tax software for your Linux desktop. There isn’t a heck of a lot of commercially available software for your Linux desktop … period. Most of the software for Linux is freely distributed by developers who like developing the software. That’s why there are about a hundred music apps for linux. Music apps are fun, tax apps are not.
Tax software demands a tremendous amount of testing before release. Constantly changing tax laws require more software updates than Windows patches and this kind of thing is just not very high up on the todo list for GPL developers. Throw in the fact that, at least in the U.S., you have 50 sub jurisdictions for tax filing and the picture gets real silly, real fast.
You may have also noticed Europe far outpaces the U.S. in the adoption and development of Linux. Why in the world would European developers be interested in creating U.S. tax software for Linux? Remember, music apps are much cooler.
Web based tax filing for Linux users also has its problems. Lack of browser support can ruin what would be a relatively painless tax filing experience for Explorer users.
Many Linux diehards try year after year to get commercial tax software like TurboTax to run in Wine. The Wine Application Database doesn’t have an entry for 2006 TurboTax yet, but the 2005 TurboTax report depresses me just to read it
What works
Install, Updates, multiple state download and updates, interview and forms, help, export to PDFWhat does not
Keystrokes are broken in a lot of dialogs: The arrow keys or delete key may not work, so you have to use the mouse sometimes to manage text. Curiously, the opposite is true of pop-up help dialogs: You can’t interact with them using the mouse at all, you have to use the keyboard.
What was not tested
e-filing, printing.
So what should do you if you’re running Linux and you want to take a break from your music downloads, image editing and movie ripping and actually file your taxes? Hopefully you’ve installed a dual boot system and kept your copy of Windows tucked in the back corner of your hard drive for just this same reason. Truthfully, this is the exact reason I still have a Windows partition at home.
You can try the web based browser route for filing your taxes but the more complex your tax filing becomes, the less this route makes sense even without Linux. I’ve never liked the idea of preparing the filing online and have heard very few positive reports from family and friends who have taken the browser route.
Just suck it up. Put on your Tux t-shirt and fire up your Windows partition. Download the stuff that works, finish the job and shut down the machine as quickly as you can before it gets zombied out. Then fire it up next year when you have to do it all over again.
Booting into Windows to prepare your taxes does not count against you in the “I haven’t booted Windows is ____ days / months / years” contest.
There is no shame. It is not your fault as a Linux lover that you have to file your taxes.
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