Systems and methods for analyzing and generating explanations for changes in tax return results

• US 10,387,970 B1
• Filed: 11/25/2014
• Issued: 08/20/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 11/25/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intuit, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Intuit, Inc.
• Inventors: Wang, Gang, McCluskey, Kevin M., Hanekamp, Jr., David A., Cabrera, Luis F., Artamonov, Michael A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lemieux, Jessica
• Application Number:
  US14/553,347
• Time in Patent Office: 1,729 Days
• Field of Search: 705 31
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/123 Tax preparation or submission

Abstract

Systems, methods and articles of manufacture for performing a comparison of tax results based on different sets of tax data, and generating an explanation as to why the tax results differ or do not differ due to the differences in the tax data. The system includes a computing device, a data store in communication with the computing device and a tax preparation software application executable by the computing device. The tax preparation software application has a tax calculation engine, a tax calculation graph, and a change analysis engine. The tax calculation engine is configured to perform a plurality of tax calculation operations based on the tax calculation graph. The change analysis engine is configured to determine whether tax results based on different tax data differ or do not differ. The system may also generate explanation(s) of the reasons that the tax results differ or do not differ due to the different tax data.

Claims

1. A computing system, comprising:

a computing device comprising a computer processor, a memory and a display;

a computerized tax return preparation application comprising computer executable instructions stored in the memory and executable by the processor, the computerized tax return preparation application being operable to generate an electronic tax return and comprising;

a shared data store configured to store user-specific data,

an interface controller in communication with the shared data store,

a tax calculation graph comprising a plurality of nodes including one or more of input nodes, functional nodes, function nodes and a plurality of calculation paths, each calculation path connecting a plurality of data dependent nodes,

a tax calculation engine in communication with the shared data store and configured to receive the tax calculation graph as an input,

a change analysis engine in communication with the tax calculation engine, and

an explanation engine in communication with the change analysis engine and the user interface controller and configured to generate an explanation of a reason why calculated values changed,

the tax calculation engine configured to read the user-specific data from the shared data store and perform a plurality of tax calculation operations utilizing the tax calculation graph,

the change analysis engine configured to access a first calculated tax calculation graph resulting from processing the tax calculation graph based on first tax data for the taxpayer, the first calculated tax calculation graph having a first calculated tax value for a first node of the tax calculation graph, and access a second calculated tax calculation graph resulting from processing the tax calculation graph based on second tax data for the taxpayer, the second calculated tax calculation graph having a second calculated tax value for the first node of the tax calculation graph, wherein the second tax data is different from the first tax data, the change analysis engine being further configured to analyze the first tax data and second tax data to determine one or more differences between the first tax data and second tax data, determine that the first calculated tax value differs from the second calculated tax value, analyze the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second calculated tax calculation graph to determine one or more changed nodes on the tax calculation graph, other than the first node and any input node(s), having values which differ between the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second calculated tax calculation graph,

the explanation engine being configured to generate an explanation of a reason that the first calculated tax value and the second calculated tax value for the first node differ based on the one or more changed nodes, the explanation engine comprising a natural language generator executable by the processor of the computing device for generating the explanation, and

the interface controller configured to receive the explanation and present the explanation to the user through a user interface presented through the display of the computing device.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the change analysis system is configured to determine the one or more changed nodes by traversing the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second calculated tax calculation graph and comparing respective values for the respective calculated tax calculation graphs at corresponding nodes.

3. The computing system of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of impact chains for each of a plurality of the nodes determined based on the tax calculation graph, wherein an impact chain for a respective node consists of one of (a) each of the other nodes which are affected by the respective node, or (b) each of the other nodes which affect the respective node;

and

wherein the change analysis engine is configured to utilize one or more of the impact chains to analyze the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second calculated tax calculation graph to determine one or more nodes on the tax calculation graph having values which differ between the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second tax calculation graph.

4. The computing system of claim 1, further comprising rule-based logic agent in communication with the shared data store, the rule-based logic agent being configured to receive the user-specific data from the shared data store, determine which questions of the computerized tax return preparation application that remain unanswered based at least in part upon the received user-specific data and a data structure, generate a non-binding suggestion based at least in part upon the determined questions, and transmit the non-binding suggestion to the user interface controller.

5. The computing system of claim 4, the data structure comprising a table including respective rows and respective columns, wherein respective rules are defined by respective rows of the table and respective questions are defined by respective columns of the table.

6. The computing system of claim 4, wherein the user interface controller is configured to receive user input through the computer generated interview screen and to update the user-specific data stored in the shared data store to generate second user-specific data stored in the shared data store.

7. The computing system of claim 6, wherein tax calculation engine is configured to read the second user-specific data as the input and perform the plurality of tax calculation operations utilizing the tax calculation graph populated the second user-specific data.

8. The computing system of claim 7, wherein tax calculation engine is configured to update the second user-specific data stored in the shared data store based at least in part upon the plurality of tax calculation operations to generate third user-specific data stored in the shared data store.

9. The computing system of claim 8, wherein the rule-based logic agent is configured to read the third user-specific data stored in the shared data store, determine which questions of the computerized tax return preparation application remain unanswered based at least in part upon the third user-specific data and the data structure.

10. The computing system of claim 4, wherein the rule-based logic agent is configured to eliminate at least one rule defined by at least one row of the decision table based at least in part upon the user-specific data to reduce a number of candidate questions to include in a non-binding suggestion for the user interface controller.

11. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the change analysis engine is configured to traverse the first calculation graph node by node and the second calculation graph node by node to determine to that one or more changed nodes on the tax calculation graph, other than the first node and any input node, have values that differ between the first calculated tax calculation graph and the second calculated tax calculation graph.

12. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the user interface controller configured to present the explanation simultaneously with first tax data and second tax data.

13. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the shared data store is located remotely relative to the rule-based logic agent, the user interface controller and the calculation engine.

14. The computing system of claim 1, wherein at least one functional node or function node includes an explanation tag.

15. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the explanation engine is configured to generate an explanation having a level of detail based on a product version of the computerized tax return preparation application.

16. The computing system of claim 1, the user interface comprising:

a first window comprising tax data from the first calculated tax calculation graph;

a second window comprising tax data from the second calculated tax calculation graph; and

an explanation window including the generated explanation.