You probably need years and multiple millions of dollars to write competent tax return preparation software. Our office uses an expensive pro package (Lacerte, owned by Intuit) which is frankly a C- product.
I don't know what would be more important -- coding skill or a deep, intimate knowledge of tax law. Tax law is an internally inconsistent logic box. Oh. And ambiguous too. I'm not sure how you deal with those situations.
Even if you succeed in writing awesome tax prep software, you have a marketing problem.
We do not like Lacerte. We have identified software we would rather use. But I cannot get my team to move to the new software. Learning curve fear, data conversion fear. Etc.
Look at the accounting software business. Why does Quickbooks continue to dominate the market?
If you are interested in breaking into the market, find a tiny subset that you can competently serve. E.g., my friend Mary Beth and her business partner solved a truly horrific piece of tax hell at www.form8621.com. You have no idea about the intellectual complexity of the tax law underpinning her software.
"Tax law is an internally inconsistent logic box. Oh. And ambiguous too."
Plus, it changes every year, so someone has to keep up with all the changes in the tax code and translate them into changes in the software's code. And, of course, the new code needs to be very well tested. All that has to happen according to a strict schedule that the software developer has absolutely no control over. It's not a business I'd want to get into.
One nice thing from a business point of view is that you'll get a steady revenue stream: there's no way you can reuse 2016's tax software for 2017, so all your customers are forced to buy the new software every year.
This year I was helping a friend figure out how to report OID income from a contingent payment debt instrument (this sounds like something esoteric, but it comes from a CD sold to her by an investment advisor at her local bank). Trying to understand the IRS's explanation of this is a world of pain, since it reuses concepts that were designed for a completely different purpose, and they flat out tell you that the number reported on your 1099 form may not be the right number to report on your tax return.
You probably need years and multiple millions of dollars to write competent tax return preparation software. Our office uses an expensive pro package (Lacerte, owned by Intuit) which is frankly a C- product.
I don't know what would be more important -- coding skill or a deep, intimate knowledge of tax law. Tax law is an internally inconsistent logic box. Oh. And ambiguous too. I'm not sure how you deal with those situations.
Even if you succeed in writing awesome tax prep software, you have a marketing problem.
We do not like Lacerte. We have identified software we would rather use. But I cannot get my team to move to the new software. Learning curve fear, data conversion fear. Etc.
Look at the accounting software business. Why does Quickbooks continue to dominate the market?
If you are interested in breaking into the market, find a tiny subset that you can competently serve. E.g., my friend Mary Beth and her business partner solved a truly horrific piece of tax hell at www.form8621.com. You have no idea about the intellectual complexity of the tax law underpinning her software.