TaxDollars 1995 for OS/2 (Final Version)- by Chris Wenham
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TaxDollars holds the honor of being, so far, the only native OS/2 tax preparation software on the market and it is only available in a US version. Considering the line of glossy, 'chiseled and carved' tax software available for the Windows platform this year, TaxDollars is facing a lot of stiff competition. It even has a few strikes against it that some might consider unfair or just plain hard luck. For example the program could not support the 1040PC form for this year, BT&T blames this on the, "Snow storm on the East coast that delayed 1040PC testing and lacking OS/2 systems and expertise at the testing center." They apologize and say that the 1040PC will be available next year, and until then to use the regular IRS forms.

TaxDollars is very inexpensive though, and since this is the season for watching what you spend, bargains are very much welcome.

Installation

BT&T made use of the familiar IBM Installation program and jazzed it up a little with some presentation graphics that slide across the screen. That's pretty much where the glitz ends though and we see the software roll up its sleeves and get its hands dirty with serious work. Installation takes about 5 minutes and goes through only two floppy disks. It sets up a folder on your desktop with all the program objects and doesn't need to change your CONFIG.SYS, so you do not have to reboot.

Filing your taxes

TaxDollars supports most of the popular tax forms used by the average household, but not as many as its more embellished Windows counterparts. In the Final Version the following forms are supported: Forms 1040, 1040-V, 1099 (INT and DIV), 2160, 2441, 4562, 8829, and Schedules A, B, C, D, E, W-2, EIC, R, and SE. Related forms are linked together by blue entry fields, pressing the 'L' key on these fields will automatically bring up that form. After completing, users SAVE the form then select 'Return to 1040' from the File menu and the calculated value is inserted in the appropriate blue space.

This approach makes filling out your tax forms a line-by-line affair, linear and simple, the way most people do it.

We had little trouble actually filling out the on-screen forms, they're all planned out logically in the appropriate sections, with green fields being calculated, yellow fields editable and the blue ones linked. There's very little printed documentation that ships with the software, just a quick-reference card to get you started, but on-line help is available.

What If...

After completing your 1040 you may wish to play 'What if' with the figures, to see how much you'd have to pay if circumstances were different. Say if you weren't single but married, or if your total income or adjustment was different. The figures you play around with do not get carried over to your real 1040 though. An interesting feature.

Also after completing the 1040, you can select 'Final Review' and TaxDollars will analyse and generate a review of your form, pointing out any warnings and reminders you should take note of.

Printing

TaxDollars uses a seperate program for printing your tax returns. The printed output from this program is excellent; the forms look exactly like the IRS originals with pixel-accurate placement. The printing utility also allows you to select what forms get printed individually, page-by-page, or in batches of any arrangement as you please. Form 1040 is split into front and back pages, so you can print the front, turn the page over and print the back to save paper and make it look even more authentic. If your printer can duplex automatically you can print the two in one go and be done with it.

Even more interesting are the software's graphing features for making bar and pie charts to view on-screen or send to the printer. All reports can be previewed in WYSIWYG mode before printing.

At home we have both an HP Deskjet and an Epson dot-matrix printer, two of the most common types of printer used, so I tried printing on both of them. Again the output was perfect on both printers, no problems or alignment irregularities whatsoever--making up for the lack of 1040PC support this year (unless you only have a daisywheel, but even then you can print to a file and run it on someone else's computer.)

Note: Even though the 1040PC form was not supported for this year, Tax Dollars will still generate and print such a form for reference purposes only.

State Tax

TaxDollars claims State Tax support for only the following states: California, Illinois, New York and North Carolina. We are in New York State but were unable to test the State Tax calculations in time for this review as BT&T claimed they would not be ready until Feb. 29th. BT&T hopes to have more states supported by then.

Problems...

This software, maybe in the rush to get it out the door for an obvious deadline, was shipped with a number of bugs. For example after I made a screen capture of one of the forms it somehow disappeared. I had it captured just fine, but when I tried to locate the window again it was nowhere to be found. All the menu options were greyed out and I had to restart the program.

In other places the data entered into a form mysteriously disappeared. On the Schedule C form, a value entered in the 'Other' field of the Accounting Method was deleted when any of the check boxes below were selected. The problem seemed to be cured by entering that data last on the form.

Intentional interface features may also bug you, for example if you accidentally enter any punctuation in the Social Security Number fields, a dialog box will immediately pop up and tell you off. I'd prefer if the program waited until I'd finished typing and pressed 'Tab' or 'Enter' before it tries to correct. I'm sure it's quite flashy from the programmer's point of view to have it alert errors on the fly, but it's annoying to us.

Some potentially alarming math errors are present too. For example in the form 8829 the 'Total hours available for use during the year' lists the calculation as being '366 days x 24 hours' but gives the answer in the green field as 8,760--the answer for 365 days x 24 hours. This is correct for 1995 though (1996, being a leap year, has 366 days, not 1995) and therefore nothing to sweat about, the information presented on the screen is just contradictory.

Summary...

TaxDollars is a product that's trying hard to match features with the big boys rolled out by Parsons and Intuit. It doesn't have the flash that the others do and it doesn't have all the power and features that the others do either. TaxDollars is a growing product that's at about the same level those others were a few years ago. But it's the only native OS/2 tax preparation software.

It wouldn't be fair to say you should use TaxDollars just because it is the only native OS/2 tax-prep software since you'll only use the program once a year. But TaxDollars is very attractively priced, only $17.95, and chances are you qualify for one of the many discounts that bring it down to only $9.95 or $7.95--barely above the cost of shipping. At this price the features and power of TaxDollars turn it into a very nice bargain indeed. BT&T is offering discounts for Team OS/2 and OS/2 User Group members, a nice reward for dedication to OS/2. Apparently they think that loyalty works both ways.

* TaxDollars Final v2.95A for OS/2
BT&T Consumer Technology
Phone: 1-800-OS2-TAXD -or- 1-800-672-8293
MSRP: $17.95
Chris Wenham is a Team OS/2er in Binghamton, NY with a catchy-titled company--Wenham's Web Works. He has been writing all sorts of strange things from comedy to sci-fi to this.

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