taxtrace

Prepare a US federal and state return from your own documents, on your own machine, with every number traced to the page it came from.

taxtrace does not file anything. It reads a folder of your documents (W-2s, 1099s, 1098s, property manager statements, receipts, foreign bank statements, last year's return) and produces an entry sheet you type into consumer tax software, an FBAR account list, and a list of questions for you: anything it couldn't settle from the documents alone.

Three rules hold everywhere:

1. Nothing is guessed. Every value carries the file, the page and the exact text it was read from, and a deterministic check rejects any value whose quote isn't on that page.
2. Your documents never leave your machine. Where a language model reads them (sorting documents, reading messy receipts), it is a local MLX model on your Mac. The chat can use a cloud model, which only ever sees masked text (see Chat).
3. Nothing is decided silently. A receipt that could be a repair or an improvement, a missing 1099, a rate choice: each is a question for you, with the evidence next to it.

Status

Early. What works today:

• taxtrace redact: masks a document down to its layout, so a layout can be studied (by a person or an AI assistant helping write a parser) without its values, names or places. Every digit becomes #, and every word the IRS's own publications don't use in lowercase becomes *s, so names, streets and towns go without anyone listing them.

• taxtrace import, outline and unlock: sort a preparer's export into the workspace, list the forms in each document, and check passwords kept in the Keychain.

• taxtrace prior: reads a filed return's carryforwards (see Carryforwards).

• taxtrace k1: reads each Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) face, every box and code, its statements, the Schedule K-3, and North Carolina's D-403 NC K-1 (see K-1s).

• taxtrace passive: each passive activity's year and the loss it carries in (see Passive activities).

• taxtrace 1098: reads each Form 1098 mortgage interest statement (see Form 1098).

• taxtrace 1099: reads the 1099-DIVs, 1099-INTs and 1099-Bs on brokers' consolidated 1099 statements (see Forms 1099-DIV and 1099-INT and Stock sales).

• taxtrace rental: puts the rental's Schedule E together, line by line (see Schedule E).

• taxtrace qbi: Form 8995, the qualified business income deduction (see Form 8995).

• taxtrace paystub: reads a pay stub's income tax withheld, and projects the year's (see Estimated tax).

• taxtrace estimates: the year's withholding and estimated payments against the safe harbor, quarter by quarter (see Estimated tax).

• taxtrace ira: each spouse's IRA deduction and the Roth IRA's limit at the year's projected income (see IRAs).

• taxtrace jobchange: the year as the pay stub projects it, against leaving one job and starting another (see A change of job).

• taxtrace sales: the year's stock sales for Schedule D, the wash-sale windows, and the room left for losses (see Stock sales).

• taxtrace moves: the year's tax-saving moves, ranked by the dollars each saves, with deadlines (see The year's moves).

• taxtrace itr: reads India's income tax return (ITR-2): a property sale, the interest, the tax India kept (see India's return).

• taxtrace bank: reads a foreign bank's statement of account: interest, a tax refund, balances (see Bank statements).

• taxtrace entry: the year's entry sheet, to type into a filing site (see Entry sheet).

• taxtrace ui: the workspace in the browser, with a chat (see Chat).

• `taxtrace

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