OpenTaxSolver

1 day ago 4

April 28, 2025
- Project - https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/

OpenTaxSolver (OTS) is a free, safe + secure program for calculating Tax Form entries for Federal and State personal income taxes. It automatically fills-out and prints your forms for mailing.

News:

OTS has been updated for the most recent 2024 tax-year, and is available for downloading.

The OTS package covers popular Federal IRS forms, and twelve (12) of the largest states which impose income taxes. The forms include the Federal-1040, Schedules 1-3 along with Schedules A-D, and the states of VA, NC, OH, NJ, MA, PA, CA, AZ, MI, OR, MI, and NY. The package also includes form programs for the Health Savings Account (HSA) Form 8889 and Form 8606 for Nondeductible IRAs, Schedule-SE, Forms 2210, 8812, 8829, 8959, 8960, 8995 and California Form 5805 - all accessed under the Other Forms bullet of the OTS GUI front screen.

If you encounter any problems, then write to [email protected]. Please include in any messages: the version of OTS, your Operating System (OS), which Form(s), and how you are using OTS (by GUI or command-line). Always check back here periodically for updates and downloads.

Tax forms filed under extension will be due by October 15, 2025.

All fields in the filled-out PDF forms can be changed or edited with Libre-Office Draw.

Movies: OTS has two movies on Youtube:

The first one shows basically what OTS does and how it works -- good to watch if you are deciding whether to download it. The second one is a helpful instructional guide for first time users. If we get good feedback that these are helpful, then we will add more movies on requested topics. These were created a few years ago now, but the process still looks basically similar.

Auto-Fillout: Saves time by filling out the answers onto the actual government PDF tax-forms. Auto-Fillout of PDF Forms is now available for all forms supported OTS (Federal & State). You will see the Auto-Fillout option when you click Print.

Mailing List:
Join the OTS mailing list to receive important messages about new updates and fixes: Subscribe to New OTS Releases & Updates. Very low traffic. (You can remove yourself from the list at anytime by sending an email from your email account to [email protected] with the words "Remove me." as the first words in the subject line.)

General:
In the USA for this year's tax-season, your 2024 Federal Taxes should have been mailed by Tuesday, April 15, 2025. Many State Taxes had that day as well. If you filed for an extension, then your final form(s) generally must be postmarked by Wednesday, October 15, 2025.

You can check the OTS Blog for status updates. All -updates, -notifications of issues, and -contributions of additional forms -- from you, the community -- are much appreciated! Special thanks again to all contributors.

OTS FaceBook Page:
Please visit and like-us on our FaceBook page.

Donate:
Several users have asked how they can help support OTS, even if not technically inclined. So a fund-drive has been started under Please-Fund-Us to support continued updates and improvements to this project. Visit the fund-drive page at:
The page explains how the funds will be used. No donation amount is too small. Every bit is helping.

Overview

The OTS tax package is intended to be used with the Tax booklets published by your government for determining what numbers you need to enter, and then it assists you in doing the otherwise tedious calculations while showing the intermediate and final numbers. It takes care of the tedious and error-prone work.

OTS is intended for those who are comfortable doing their own taxes - especially those who have previously done their taxes and basically understand how to fill out the forms. OTS does much of the math for you.

The OTS_GUI is the default Graphical User Interface. The GUI allows you to conveniently enter tax data, and then invokes the appropriate text program when you press the Compute button. Alternatively, you can directly enter your tax data by editing the text files with your favorite text editor, and then process it by invoking the appropriate tax-solver program. Most people nowadays use the GUI, so that is the default mode according to instructions in the package.

Behind the GUI is a text-window. It shows the actual commands the GUI uses when you press buttons. You can look at that, if you wish, to learn how to run the same commands directly from your command-line. Since the GUI is fairly self-explanatory, the detailed documentation focuses on how the core text programs work, for those interested.

Example screen shots of OTS_GUI.

Although originally created for US 1040 tax forms, the core routines have also been used to solve other tax forms, and for other countries or states. Some basic error checking is included.

While the OTS programs developed over many years, results have often been checked against commercial packages. The answers produced by OTS typically matched to within a dollar or so, differing sometimes by rounding effects. Certainly your mileage may vary. Always double-check your tax forms!!

Documentation

Usage
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Data Input Format
How to Run or Compile OTS
How the Core Text-based Program Works
Program Design & Structure
How to Add New Forms
Motivations

Download OpenTaxSolver

OpenTaxSolver for this year's taxes (2024 Tax Year) can be downloaded from:

Source code and compiled executables are available in all download packages. Example form-data files are included for all forms. Typical package size is about 10-30 MB (reasonably small by today's standards), which includes all the PDF forms. Prior year's versions are available at Downloads.

Unpacking
Packages for Linux/Unix/MaxOSx are tar-gzip (.tgz), while packages for Microsoft are zip files. To unpack, double-click on the package. Or from a command-line, tar xfz package.tgz or unzip package.zip . Will unpack into a directory of the same name. (To see contents prior to unpacking, tar tvfz package.tgz or unzip -l package.zip .)

Tar packages contain precompiled executables for Linux (64-bit), and MacOSx.
Zip packages contain precompiled executables for Microsoft PCs.
Source code and compilation instructions are also provided in all versions.
(Uninstall by simply deleting the directory. No registry entries are made.)

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