Following Up on TurboTax

I got more than a few responses regarding the TurboTax issue. In fact, I probably got more feedback on it than any other post I’ve written. I guess it should be no surprise that when it comes to taxes, people are going to have an opinion. Heh.

Some of you reminded me that VMWare may be a suitable alternative here. One person suggested purchasing it, and another suggested using the demo period to complete my taxes. It’s not a bad idea, but I think it feeds into the same core problem of not having support for our system in the first place. By using VMWare, companies like Intuit won’t see the Linux usage on their logs and thus won’t be moved to do anything.

On top of that, if I recall correctly I’d still need a Windows license to install on top of VMWare and in turn run TurboTax. So now I’m either paying into M$’s pocket again or I’m messing with cracked/pirated software. It’s exactly this dilemma that got me using Linux in the first place.

I also received some good news: Gnomie Yakov Shafranovich got TurboTax Tax Freedom to work. It looks like you’re going to want Firefox to report itself as Firefox on Windows. The full details of Yakov’s solution can be found on his blog. Thanks, Yakov!