Hi John,

My payroll program dosen't use tax tables. It uses the IRS formula provided in circule E, Publication 15. Essentially this is what the IRS uses to build the 60 pages of tax tables it distributes in it Publication 15. In my program the user fill out a form entering variables like amount per dependency exemption, rate to apple within income ranges, etc. This information come right out of the IRS publication. After filling out about 7 rows in the form, your done. Then the program has all the information needed to calculate withholding and there is no need to update user with the latest table every year. So, If the user purchases the app, I give away the tax tables updates each year free of charge.

If there are any major changes in income tax rate, I might need to modify my form which was necessary in 2001. Then the client would need to download the latest version of the app to get the new form. Before the tax rate changes in 2001, the form worked greate from 1995 until 2000 and all the user had to do was enter the new variable into the form once each year.

Someone could probably make a living if they would write a web service that provided payroll withholding amounts on all taxing authorities. Then my application could consume the web service by sending payroll location, number of exemptions, gross earning, single/married/head of household, gross earning for the period, etc, and the web service would return Feberal, state and local withholding that could be enter into my app. If the web service used XML it could be consumed by all OS/apps. Maybe someone already provides such a service?