A tax reporting setup

Tax prep is done in a subdirectory of the year.:

finance/
 2023/
  taxes/
   Health_Insurance_Form1095a_2023.pdf
   (1099s, etc..)
   next.journal -> ../../2024/2024.journal
   prev.journal -> ../../2022/2022.journal
   tax-reports.org.gpg

tax-reports.org (optionally encrypted with gpg) is the main thing; it is an emacs org outline shaped like the tax forms or tax preparation software (freetaxusa.com in my case).

For each form item/field, there's an outline heading, and under it one or more hledger reports designed to show (and explain) the required information. Here's an excerpt:

* tax preparation for 2023    -*- org-confirm-babel-evaluate:nil; -*-
...
** Income
*** overview
#+begin_src hledger :cmdline -f ../2???.journal -p 2023 bal -Y type:r cur:. -4 --invert
#+end_src

#+RESULTS:
#+begin_example
Balance changes in 2023:
...
#+end_example

*** Common Income
**** Interest Income
#+begin_src hledger :cmdline -f ../2???.journal -p 2023 bal -Y type:r interest --invert
#+end_src

#+RESULTS:
: Balance changes in 2023:
...

The reports are embedded as org source blocks. With cursor on the command line, C-c C-c runs the command and updates the RESULTS. (The two RESULTS above have different markup, because of output size - (setq org-babel-min-lines-for-block-output ...) to control this.)

The commands reference ../2???.journal (2023.journal in this case), and some of them use prev.journal or next.journal as well.

I used to define tax-specific account aliases renaming my usual account names to match the names used in tax forms/tax software, but that's work and another layer of confusion, so currently I don't bother with that.

I have used this setup for a number of years now and for me it gives a good combination of manageability, tweakability, repeatability, and persistence/memory across years.

For example, when starting tax prep for a year, I start with a copy of the previous year's outline, which includes all of last year's reports. As I press C-c C-c in each report, it updates to this year. This is useful for comparison and sanity checking. Each year, the process becomes easier.

(Discussion)

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