Patent ID: 11861734
Assignee: INTUIT INC.
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 10:
11. An article of manufacture comprising a non-transitory computer program carrier readable by a server and embodying executable instructions of a computerized tax return preparation system being stored in a memory of the server, the server being in communication with a computer operated by a preparer over a network, the instructions being executed by a processor of the server that performs a process of preparing an electronic tax return, the process comprising:
by executing a calculation engine of the computerized tax return preparation system reading first stored taxpayer-specific data stored in a shared data store, determining first calculated data based at least in part upon calculations performed using the first stored taxpayer-specific data and a calculation graph, the calculation graph representing a calculation graph data structure and comprising a plurality of nodes, each node representing a tax data input, a tax concept, a function or a tax calculation, where at least one node of the calculation graph is interconnected to another node of the calculation graph by a tax gist function, and a plurality of calculation paths connecting respective nodes, respective calculation paths defining respective data dependencies between respective nodes, a first node having a data dependency on another node based on a determination at the first node depends on a value of the another node, writing, by the calculation engine, the first calculated data to the shared data store resulting in second stored taxpayer-specific data comprising the first calculated data;
by executing a rule-based logic agent of the computerized tax return preparation system reading from the shared data store, the second stored taxpayer-specific data, determining at least one question of at least one topic of the electronic tax return that remains unanswered based at least in part upon the second stored taxpayer-specific data and a decision table derived from a completeness graph comprising a plurality of rows defining respective rules and a plurality of columns defining respective topic questions, generating at least one non-binding suggestion including the at least one unanswered that is presented to a display of the computer operated by the preparer of the electronic tax return, providing, by the rule-based logic agent, the at least one non-binding suggestion to a user interface controller;
by executing the user interface controller, presenting through the display of the computer to the preparer of the electronic tax return, a computer generated interview screen involving the unanswered question of the at least one non-binding suggestion, receiving through the generated interview screen, a response to the unanswered question from the computer, and writing the response to the shared data store that updates the second stored taxpayer-specific data resulting in third stored taxpayer-specific data, where a portion of the third stored taxpayer-specific data is new taxpayer-specific data that was not previously utilized to determine the first calculated data; and
by executing the calculation engine, reading from the shared data store, at least the new taxpayer-specific data of the third stored taxpayer-specific data, determining the second calculated data by only performing those calculations at nodes in the calculation graph having a direct or indirect data dependency on a node that changed as a result of the new taxpayer-specific data, writing the second calculated data to the shared data store resulting in fourth stored taxpayer-specific data; using the tax gist function to determine a reason why there is, or is not, a difference between the first calculated data and the second calculated data; and presenting, through the display of the computer, the reason why there is, or is not, a difference to the preparer.