TXF categories in 2.4.10

[Alex Aycinena]

See my comments below:

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 7:57 PM,  <gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
> To: "michael.c.smith at alumni.cmu.edu" <michael.c.smith at alumni.cmu.edu>, "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:16:05 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: TXF categories in 2.4.10
> Mike--
>
> Not seeing a reply, I'll jump in and say that this has been shepherded by Alex, who has managed the coding and infrastructure. I do not know what his current status is, or whether others have taken any interest in this area.
>
> David
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Michael C. Smith <michael.c.smith at alumni.cmu.edu>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 6:43 PM
> Subject: TXF categories in 2.4.10
>
> The list of TXF categories that come with 2.4.10 are a subset of what is really on the various US-based tax forms.  Is there a mechanism to add additional categories?  Is this an active area for development?
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Michael C. Smith" <michael.c.smith at alumni.cmu.edu>
> To: michael.c.smith at alumni.cmu.edu
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:57:13 -0800
> Subject: Re: TXF categories in 2.4.10
> First, apologies if this message doesn't get threaded with my earlier message.
>
> Second, I'd be willing to make contributions to txf.scm, however, I don't have access to any "reference number" values.  Furthermore, I could use a pointer to the various field values in the "(cons" lines of the source file.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike
>
> On 01/16/2013 06:43 PM, Michael C. Smith wrote:
>>
>> The list of TXF categories that come with 2.4.10 are a subset of what is
>> really on the various US-based tax forms.  Is there a mechanism to add
>> additional categories?  Is this an active area for development?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mike
>
>
>
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The TXF codes that Gnucash uses for the US Income Tax Report/Export
were originally established by Intuit for transferring data from their
accounting software (e.g., Quicken) to various other's Tax Packages
through an export/import process. Intuit would maintain and make
available, as tax laws changed, a specification of what the codes were
and how the data should be packaged for transfer.

The last specification I could find on the internet is ver041 dated
6/16/06. Gnucash is up-to-date with that spec except that a few
capital-gains related codes, that have not yet been implemented (it's
on my todo list but not trivial).

I believe the industry moved away from this approach except that they
have a legacy user base. Since Intuit has both accounting software and
tax preparation software, why make it easy for their users to
interface with non-Intuit products? Their products share data in some
apparently non-open manner. Since I don't use their products, I don't
know anything about the details.

Since these codes were the 'key' in the way this was originally
implemented in Gnucash (before my involvement) and there is no one
defining new/updated codes that could even roughly be considered a
standard, there is nothing to add. Of course, we could always make up
our own 'new' codes and add them, but they wouldn't interface with
anything.

Are you aware of anything more current than what I mention above that
you would be willing to share with me? Even having access to recent
tax preparation software that accepts TXF input could be useful. But
they would have to accept something more current that the ver 041
mentioned above to be of any use. I believe most do accept TXF input
(to keep those legacy customers) but it may not handle anything newer
than June 06 through that method.

Alex