PADRE in Linux

This is the first year that the Spanish tax office has provided its tax helper program PADRE for Linux.

This is quite nice, since previous years I had to run it inside a Windows Virtual Machine (for which first I had to get the Windows CDs, etc.). The new version is in Java, and for some reason it didn't want to work properly in my Ubuntu 10.04 box (the first application form to fill in your ID number was not showing properly), but it run flawlessly in the machine with Ubuntu 9.10.

This year the program also includes something quite nice, which is the ability to change quickly from "declaración conjunta" to "declaración individual", so if you are married you can put the data for both of you, and effortlessly change from one version to the other one, so that you can easily see which one turns out better.

In a couple of hours I got all my tax data online, corrected a couple of things, added some that the tax office was not aware of, checked whether it was better for us to submit a "conjunta" or an "individual" one, and printed it off. Not bad at all. Doing your taxes is always a bit painful, but this year was a bit less so.