Re: [lp-ca-on] Canadian .tax file layout

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2016-05-08 12:34 AM, Blaise Alleyne wrote:
> 
> I was look at a 2006 or 2007 file, the earliest one I had. My 2011 .tax file 
> is
> definitely just XML.

The 2006 file is likely the older binary (E-FILE?) format. It was still
called '*.tax', though.

I looked at the fillable PDF tax forms to see if they have any logic
that would help build an open tax prep system. The files themselves are
produced in Adobe LiveCycle (aka DeathSpiral), an Adobe product
completely incompatible with other Adobe products, and with the PDF spec
itself. Like all LiveCycle forms, it's encrypted, so you can't see the
embedded JS.

Luckily, like almost all DeathSpiral forms, it's encrypted with a null
password, so you can recover the editable form with:

 qpdf --decrypt file.pdf file-decr.pdf
 pdftk file-decr.pdf output file-decr-no_xfa.pdf drop_xfa

Haven't had a chance to dig into the files any more deeply.

cheers,
 Stewart