[TriLUG] TurboTax for the web and linux

Ken Wahl kenwahl at ipass.net
Wed Jan 23 09:48:29 EST 2002


On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 08:27:51PM -0500, Andrew Perrin wrote:

> Last year I did our taxes on TurboTax for the Web from a linux machine
> (debian potato, then running probably Netscape 4.0x or something like
> that). I tried to do so again this year and found that they've turned it
> off for any non-Windows/Mac browser.  Questions:
> 
> - Any ideas for devious, or not-so-devious, ways to get around this?
> - Any ideas for convincing them to change policies?

I was just reading a thread about this yesterday in alt.os.linux .  The
information in the thread indicated that Web TurboTax will kick you off
if you are not running windoze or mac.  This made me wonder if there is
some MS specific function, not HTML function, that the new Web TurboTax
executes remotely.

The original poster said he talked to a TurboTax Rep and the Rep said
that if there was enough demand for it then a *nix TurboTax and/or Web
TurboTax would be made available.  The original poster posted 2 URL's
where people could "vote" on the TurboTax website but one of them you
have to be a subscriber and the other one just kept loading the same
page repeatedly so I gave up.

This would be great open source project.  I'd pay for a GNUTaxAssassin 
(or whatever it might be called) just to get that damned OS off my box
that I keep so I can use it once a year to do my taxes.
-- 
Ken Wahl    ken at kenwahl.org     http://www.kenwahl.org/
PGP/GPG Key C225AA5A: http://www.kenwahl.org/pubkey.gpg
WARNING: This machine is powered by weapons grade Linux
Weaponized Linux Kernel 2.4.9-12 Uptime: 45 days, 23:12



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