College Student Tax Preparation

Executive Summary

The problem we sought to solve is creating an Excel based federal tax return preparation option for an average college student. Before setting out on this endeavor, we first defined what an average college student’s needs for a tax return. Our determination is that an average college student files as either single or married, has zero to two children, has one to six W-2’s, one to two 1098-T’s, and zero to two 1099-Int’s. Determining what inputs an average college student has in a tax return allowed us to refine which tax forms and calculations are needed. Our project consists of four user forms that capture the taxpayer’s information and inputs it into a set of Excel based tax forms. Our project is equipped with both pages of the 1040, a schedule B, one copy of the first page of the 8863, two copies of the second page of the 8863 (in case the taxpayer is a college student and is also married to a college student), and a summary statement of income. The tax forms populate with information input by the taxpayer using the four user forms we created. The tax refund or tax due is calculated using hardcoded formulas and a tax calculation macro. Finally, a print preview of all of the taxpayer’s forms launches for the taxpayer’s final review before printing. It is important to note that although we feel like this would be a great idea to help estimate your tax liability/return; we strongly discourage anyone from actually filing their tax returns using this preparation tool.

Files :

Write-up

 Project file