[GNC] US Bans Free tax Software

[Jeff Abrahamson]

For those who use gnucash for personal finances, I don't see this being
important (to that goal).  As Stuart notes, gnucash provides a way to
understand your finances and prepare to file your taxes, but it doesn't
purport to know anything about tax law.

Probably the bigger issue in the U.S. is the complexity of the tax
system and the creation of an expectation that tax filing is and should
be hard, should require assistance.  (A huge fraction of U.S. tax payers
pay for tax preparation assitance.  In many countries, it is a rare
exception.)  In many European countries, for example, it's a non-event
for most people: either you don't have to file anything at all (assuming
an "uninteresting" financial life) or you just have to rubber stampe
what the tax authorities compute for you (e.g., click a button that says
"ok").  A very small fraction of people have "interesting" tax lives and
so have to do something.

The UK and France, probably among others, have rules that make the use
of FOSS accounting software difficult or illegal.  In France it's under
the guise of preventing people from cheating on VAT.  It's
anti-competitive, of course, but if we were going to start talking about
anti-competitive laws, this might not be the most influential place to
start.

Jeff Abrahamson
http://p27.eu/jeff/
http://transport-nantes.com/


On 11/04/2019 07:28, Stuart McGraw wrote:
> On 4/10/19 10:33 PM, David Cousens wrote:
>> Just noticed this post.
>> https://news.yahoo.com/free-irs-software-filing-taxes-191746938.html?fbclid=IwAR3-GIPM3S6SazRqcyKb1Lywu4wMhtWB9Je8YU_cK_usuW4FLf13y07ATJs.
>>
>> Impact on the use of GnuCash for Tax preparation in the US could be
>> profound. Looks like the US government is trying to head the same way
>> as the
>> Brits.  Australia has done something similar recently in that one has to
>> join a consortium of software developers (at a significant fee) to
>> get full
>> access to the information needed to build in software communication
>> to the
>> ATO. The ATO no longer publishes the protocols in use and has outsourced
>> developmemnt of the protocols to a non-government consortium
>
> I'm don't think will have any effect on Gnucash today because Gnucash
> does not do tax preparation: filling out IRS forms and submitting them
> electronically to the IRS.  I doubt it would, given the yearly changes
> in the forms and regulations.
>
> Never the less it is discouraging news.  The IRS could, and should
> provide active forms, with the info they have on taxpayers pre-entered
> and with interactive help for entering the rest of it.  The U.S.
> Democrats
> and Republicans seem to have no problems coming together when the target
> in screwing American tax payers to the benefit of large corporations.
> Business as usual.
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-- 

Jeff Abrahamson
+33 6 24 40 01 57
+44 7920 594 255

http://p27.eu/jeff/
http://transport-nantes.com/