[Wine] Tax Preparation with WINE

[Chard]

As approximately 130 million other US citizens, I am dutifully preparing for the April deadline for filing my income tax returns.  Reviewing the WINE AppDB for installable tax software to help out in the process, it appeared that 2nd Story Software's TAX ACT was most likely to work with the WINE version (1.1.17) installed on my Mandriva-equipped HP laptop.  As it turned out, TAX ACT was able to successfully complete my federal return with only minor glitches.  The same was not true, however, for my state return; where the program stalled out early and could not be re-covered.  Alas, I had to turn to a Windows machine in order to complete my 08 tax forms.  

I have contacted TAX ACT in order to remind them that the American Linux Community is in need of tax software which can successfully install and operate under WINE and that the company could gain market share by tweaking its products so that they appeal to the self-preparing tax filers opting for a non-Windows Operating System (No tax support for Mac either – as far as I know).  

While the purveyors of on-line tax preparation claim that their services are secure, I am not yet comfortable in entering all my financial data, as well as my SS number and other personally identifiable information, onto some distant commercially-operated server, where it may be retained for years. Perhaps I have listened to Todd Davis's ad too often, but it seems that compromise of electronic data transfer and storage is not rare.  "Think about it sweetheart," says Eva Rosenberg, Web's Tax Mama. and a tax professional licensed to represent taxpayers before the IRS: "You're nervous about charging something online and here you are putting all your tax information online on somebody else's Web site." Web computing seems very much vulnerable to cyberbreaches.  I will wait until the cream rises on this approach before tasting.
 
Tax preparation is the pivotal reason for my not completely abandoning Windows.  If there are other self-preparers who would like be able to do their taxes on an exclusively Linux machine, I  hope that they will inform  TAX ACT of such.  

2nd Story Software, Inc
ATTN:  TAX ACT Development
1425 60th Street NE, Suite 300
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

(319) 373-3600 

https://www.taxact.com/tsupport/support_request.asp

Then, too, some WINE developers may invite the challenge of making it possible for Linux users to install a working version of a Windows-based tax program.  

A tip of the wine glass,

Richard Crosby
Lincoln City, Oregon
USA