smith@umn-cs.UUCP (06/06/83)
#N:umn-cs:10500009:000:4190
umn-cs!smith May 13 10:59:00 1983
I only got a handful of responses to my survey of computer assisted
tax return computation.
Most of those who mentioned any computational help used some kind of
pocket calculator.
There are only three reports of people who themselves used a computer
for doing their taxes: myself and two others. The other two both used
Visicalc, or some variant thereof. One of them also used a home accounting
package ("Software Home Accountant Plus").
I rely on my home machine heavily, and code everything as chain computations
in Basic. Not very elegant, but far more reliable and flexible than using
a pocket calculator. Also, it's cheaper than Visicalc since the Basic
interpreter came with the machine. This was a real help with income averaging
since I didn't have to re-grind all those tax computations every time I
found a new error in my figures. The only problem is that it IS Basic, so
the program tends to grow large and hairy.
One of the big wins with using a computer is that you can spread the work
out over the course of the year. One respondent pointed out that he tried
to do this, but still ended up with a pile of things to enter into the system
at the end. In my own case, the computer made it easy to play with estimates
of income or expenses: I ran computations using my guesses until the 'real'
W-2 or interest slip or whatever appeared in the mail. That way I managed
to decide on most of my schedules and strategies before I had all of the
data.
The computer is going to be a real help this year, since our income varies
a lot and we have to make estimated tax payments. By keeping all the data
up to date in our tax program, we'll be able to accurately re-compute our
estimated payments every quarter.
I never want to go back to doing my taxes without a computer.
Rick Smith.
p.s. Here are the survey replies:
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>From stolaf!ihnp4!spanky!hocda!machaids!5941ux!houxm!houxk!houxh!pvl
Wed Apr 20 02:57:42 1983
I used my HP-25 to help with my taxes. I have a TI-99/4A but couldn't
see how a computer would have helped.
Pete LaMaster houxh!pvl BTL NJ (201)949-0040
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>From stolaf!ihnp4!spanky!hocda!machaids!5941ux!mdm Wed Apr 20 03:16:23 1983
I did not use a computer to file a tax returns this year because I
had a relatively straight-foward return and really didn't need to
do any "what if this instead of that" kind of scenarios. I do not
own a personal computer but if I had, I would probably use it year-round
to help me prepare my tax returns since it could be used to segregate
my expenses into categories (e.g., deductable, non-deductable, credits).
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>From stolaf!allegra!honey Wed Apr 20 03:36:03 1983
To: umn-cs!smith
Subject: Re: Computer assisted taxes - (nf) (umn-cs.214)
i used a visicalc clone and dc, both quite heavily.
peter honeyman
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>From stolaf!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!Pucc-H:ac4 Sun Apr 24 18:15:47 1983
To: ecn-ec:inuxc!ixn5c!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!smith
I used an IBM PC with VisiCalc to do my taxes. I built my own
form 1040 and schedules "template" ... a little time consuming, but not
all that difficult. It was really nice to be able to "discover" a check
that I forgot to include in one category or another and be able to just
go back and change the number. All the other numbers were automatically
updated. It was also useful for a few "what if" cases (e.g. should I
expense by PC or depreciate it, trading off the investment tax credt
and the long term vs. short term impact).
I also use the Continental Software Home Accountant Plus. That
was a mixed bag for the first year. I found a lot of things that didn't
get entered as the year went by, but it did help to see all of the expenses
and sources of income.
==========
>From stolaf!ihnp4!spanky!ariel!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!logo
Tue Apr 26 03:36:02 1983
Date: 25 April 1983 2008-PDT (Monday)
Reply-To: logo
To: philabs!cmcl2!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!5941ux!machaids!
hocda!spanky!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!smith
Subject: taxes / computers - survey
i did not use a Computer, i used an Accountant. (He uses a computer, but
only to keep and print data (maybe to do grunt mathematics))