[mdlug] Open Source accounting software

[Bob Dion]

There's more to filling out a 1040 then adding and subtracting. It's 
understanding tax law. and what if any credits and deductions you are 
entitled to.

Did you file a schedule M?

how about a child tax credit or earned income credit.

I'm currently working for Jackson Hewitt. people come into the office 
making any where from $10,000 and $30,000 and leave with a $3,000 to 
$7,000 check. It's worth it to these people to pay us $200 to prepare 
their return.

Bob



Drew wrote:
> I rather had the impression that spreadsheets were originally 
> designed for financial related work,
> like accounting. Never mind the fact that I have also found them 
> useful for engineering work. In
> Open Office I count roughly 60 functions in the Financial category. 
> If there's accounting work to
> do, Open Office should be suitable. (Printing checks is another 
> matter, but I'm sure that can be
> programmed.)
> 
> At 08:48 PM 1/28/10, Michael Corral wrote:
> 
>> So you've gone from paying a person $150 to do what you could do yourself,
>> to paying $50 for software to do what you could do yourself.
>>
>> I've got that beat. I also use the full 1040 form, but I pay $0 and do
>> it all - get this! - *by hand*, with no software. Crazy, ain't it? :)
> 
> That's the way I have done it, except one year that I used Online 
> TurboTimmy, er, Tax (sorry,
> too much Tickerforum) in the hope of getting a check from the State 
> sooner, which failed miserably
> due at least in part to there being no provision for providing 
> supporting documents with the online
> filing. I never saw what it was about a 1040, even with Schedule A 
> and B, that required "professional"
> help, though maybe it would be different if I were running a 
> business? It's all addition and subtraction
> with some multiplication after all, which even if they stopped 
> teaching it in elementary school,
> calculators can now be bought for one dollar. (Three orders of 
> magnitude cheaper than the first one
> I laid eyes on, in nominal dollars!)
> 
> I never took "accounting" - sounded boring and uninteresting, so 
> maybe there's something esoteric
> about it that I missed. Would it really be that difficult for someone 
> used to, say, calculus and
> geometry?
> 
> And I also fix my own car whenever possible. It has not been easy for 
> me during my life to convince
> people to hand money over to me, so I'm generally loathe to hand it 
> to other people unnecessarily.
> 
> 
> ----
> 
> - Drew.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mdlug mailing list
> mdlug at mdlug.org
> http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug
>