ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine, mobile devices and tax returns

In one of the previous posts, we promised to tell about a joint project with the American company Intuit, thanks to which US citizens were able to fill out and file tax returns using the iPhone and Android-based smartphones. To do this, Intuit released a special mobile application SnapTax, which, among other things, used the solution for optical text recognition ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine . Our SDK in this project solves a very specific problem - it extracts data from several types of hard forms. Initially, the application was developed for the state of California, and a year later it was used in all other states. How it was done - under the cut.

Now the procedure for filling out and submitting declarations in a simplified form 1040EZ (analogue of 3-NDFL) takes only a few minutes. The user photographs the W-2 form (Wages and Tax Statement, an analogue of our personal income tax, is issued at the end of the year by the employer, it shows the total amount of the employee’s salary for the past year and the amounts deducted from taxes) using a camera on a mobile device. SnapTax automatically transfers data to Form 1040EZ. A few more clicks on the phone to prepare and send a tax return - and you can sleep peacefully.


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During the development of the project, it was decided to place ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine and specially designed templates for extracting data from W-2 forms on the Intuit server. The Americans wrote a SnapTax application client and gathered everything into a cloud service. To process photos from the iPhone, our developers wrote a new algorithm without correcting the distortions, i.e. The trapezoid and slope of the letters from photographs of the W-2 forms remain in place, but this does not affect the readability of the text and does not interfere with data processing.



Special attention is given to the processing of crumpled forms of W-2. The imperfect view of paper forms does not prevent the FlexiCapture Engine from recognizing text.

A collaborative project with Intuit shows how to make people's lives easier and easier using mobile devices and data recognition and input technologies. In this way, you can solve many beautiful tasks related to the processing of forms - invoices, forms, invoices, payment documents.

Dull statistics

- the server is available around the clock, you can submit a declaration at any time convenient for the user.
- The procedure for filling and filing the declaration takes a few minutes.
- electronic processing of documents is very convenient in the case when you have retained more taxes from your salary than you should have done - that is, when you are obliged to return a certain amount. Money can be returned automatically by transfer to your bank account (rather quickly).
- average Americans usually fill out one of three tax forms: 1040, 1040 or 1040EZ. 1040EZ is the simplest and shortest of them.

Elena Agafonova,

translator