TaxGeek06 Ideas

TaxGeek 2006 Ideas Page

Idea 4: Interview Option

Most tax programs have an interview option for users who are not knowledgable about taxes. Instead of requiring the user to know apriori that wage-based income should be entered on line 7 and self-employment income from proprietorships should be entered on line 12, an interview would ask the user if he/she has received any W2s or if there is any proprietorship income. As TaxGeek is now at a stage where many of the internal recalculations are happening correctly, an interview option is now possible. The caviat is that since Form 1040 is not fully "green", the interview option must be written cleverly enough that additional questions/forms can be added without too much disruption.

The trick here is that the person developing this interview must be familiar enough with all the forms involved to know where to map the data. Accounting students or people with extensive tax experience are probably the best fit for implementing this.