What Tax Preparation Software Looked Like in 1991

If nothing is certain but death and taxes, it's telling that death often seems more pleasant. Doing taxes is, inevitably, excruciating. All those forms. All those numbers. All that bureaucratese. No wonder we all procrastinate.

But at least it's not the early '90s. Back then, when personal computers were new, software designers and the IRS alike were experimenting with ways to use computers to replace mailed-in tax forms. The results were, as so much software was back then ... clunky. And text-based. And oddly fluorescent. Those early tax prep programs replicated analog tax documents in digital form; their main value-add, besides offering their users a whiff of The Future, was that they did your tax calculations for you. Read more...