Skip to content

codehero/OpenTaxFormFiller

Folders and files

NameName
Last commit message
Last commit date

Latest commit

 

History

53 Commits
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Repository files navigation

OpenTaxFormFiller is an open source utility aiming to eliminate the pain of using a PDF viewer to fill in tax forms.  The target audience is anybody who prefers not to use a major software package to do their taxes.  Users of OpenTaxSolver will be delighted to know that there is a utility to import their tax solve output.

Forms support:
The major pain in supporting forms is in mapping Line Numbers to PDF input fields, but it seems to be getting easier each year.  Please see YEAR/supported.json to see forms support for the given tax year. Feel free to fork and add your own state.

Dependencies:

Pdftk : industrial grade console utility for manipulating PDF files
Node.js : scripting engine
OpenTaxSolver : not strictly a dependency, but useful for calculations

Platform support:
Linux: Working
Windows: Should work if script files are ported to bat files.

General Instructions:
1. Compose your form inputs as a JSON file (see examples/8829.json). Must have .json as an extension
2. In the main directory, run
./script/fillin_values FORM_NAME INPUT.json OUTPUT_FILE
where form name is something like f8829 or f1040.
3. Your OUTPUT_FILE should be your desired pdf filename.

If you use OpenTaxSolver:
1. Save your output to a file.
2. Run
node ./script/json_ots.js FILENAME > OUTPUT_FILE.json
3. You will use the OUTPUT FILE for the General Instructions.

TODO (besides form support):
-Better error checking in scripts
-Better testing on OTS output.
-Create bat ports of bash scripts

Notes:
 The numbers in the examples directory should be taken as bogus.

References:
http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/
http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
http://www.myown1.com/linux/pdf_formfill.shtml
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/

LICENSE:
This code is released under the MIT license.

About

Programmatically fill out PDF tax forms

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Packages

No packages published