TurboTax Online refuses to work with Linux

[passerby]

Well, this is rather unsettling. TT Online has always (last 5 years anyway)
been showing a note when you sign in that they *PREFER* Micro$oft. Well, OK,
big money loves big money, no big surprise here. But you could always bypass
that screen and keep using it normally with Firefox on Linux (Ubuntu in my
case). In fact, that's the whole point of using a standards-compliant browser
so you can have cross-platform compatibility.

Not anymore.

I'm in a bind here: I've prepared my 2012 return and entered all the data a
couple of weeks ago. Everything worked just fine on Linux. Now I wanted to
finalize my return and the button to "continue if you don't like Windows" is
gone! I cannot access my own data and there does not seem to be any way
forward. They do list Firefox as a supported browser but do not let me
continue if it's FF for Linux.

I mean, the entire thing worked just fine on Linux when I used it last, all
the features, slide outs, everything I can think of. Besides, it's still
supposed to work on MacOS since they have a link to "Install Safari" So, it
seems to be not a technical issue but rather a completely organizational one:
Intuit does not want you to use a free OS, period!

WTF?!

Did anyone on a Linux PC get past that OS rejection screen?


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[taruss]

On Thursday, March 28, 2013 11:09:06 AM UTC-7, passerby wrote:
| Well, this is rather unsettling. TT Online has always (last 5 years anyway)
| been showing a note when you sign in that they *PREFER* Micro$oft....
| Not anymore.
|
| I'm in a bind here: I've prepared my 2012 return and entered all the data a
| couple of weeks ago. Everything worked just fine on Linux. Now I wanted to
| finalize my return and the button to "continue if you don't like Windows" is
| gone! I cannot access my own data and there does not seem to be any way
| forward. They do list Firefox as a supported browser but do not let me
| continue if it's FF for Linux.

Not necessarily for the average user, but since you use Linux I'll assume some computer savvy on your part.

You could try changing the "User Agent" string that your browser sends to Intuit to try to trick it into thinking you are using Firefox on a Windows platform. That might work well enough to let you finish up your taxes. (But no guarantees that it will actually work correctly).

One easy way to do that is with the extension "User Agent Switcher":
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

Good luck.

 

[passerby]

responding to
http://www.beansmart.com/taxes/turbotax-online-refuses-to-work-with-linux-38700-.htm

taruss wrote:

You could try changing the "User Agent" string that your
browser sends to Intuit
to try to trick it into thinking you are using Firefox on a Windows
platform.

That is a great idea, why didn't I think of that myself! Your tip is very
timely, too - there's not much time left to finish them. I actually think that
everything should work fine (always did before) - it's just the user agent
check that's preventing me from entering the program (or part of the website).
I'll post here if I'm successful. Thanks again!

 

[Jonathan Kamens]

In addition to the suggestion try changing your user agent,
here are four suggestions that might help:

1) Install Chrome and see if the TurboTax Online site will
let you use that instead of Firefox.
http://www.google.com/chrome

2) You can get a free trial of http://www.browserstack.com/
to be able to use IE over the web from your Linux box.

3) You can run IE under WINE. Install winetricks and use
"winetricks ie8". It'll be a just barely functioning IE,
though, and might not fully work with the TurboTax site.

4) You can run IE under VirtualBox using a Windows image
provided for free by Microsoft. Go to http://modern.ie/,
click on "Use virtual test tools", and then under the "Local
virtualization" column, select Linux and then "VirtualBox for
Linux". You'll need to install VirtualBox too, of course.