It’s tax season again.  You know the signs:  People talking IRS, TurboTax, Deductions, IRAs, Tax Credits and the dreaded Tax Payment.  Tax season always reminds me of a little tax utility I wrote.

About 3 years ago I had a problem getting my trades from my Broker into TurboTax.  I had all my trades in a nice little spreadsheet ready to import when alas I saw that the only import format TurboTax supported was TXF.  TXF? What is a TXF I thought.  I looked it up and discovered it was a fairly simple text format.  I also saw many conversion programs available that would take a CSV or Excel file and convert them to TXF for the low price of $40.  $40 to convert one text file to another?

I was frustrated that something as basic as a common file import was not available in TurboTax and that 3rd parties where charging as much as I paid for the tax program to do this simple conversion.  One of my skills being a software architect I got to work and wrote the converter in an hour or so and got my taxes going.  I then decided to put this conversion utility on my website so that anyone can use it for FREE.

So around this time of year I get a ton of traffic to that TXF conversion utility as Intuit still hasn’t gotten around to adding it to TurboTax so there is still a big need to fill.  I even use it myself  and I always enjoy the intermittent thanks I get from satisfied users.

Just my little way of giving back while the Tax-man taketh away…