Doing taxes on a virtual machine

A few years back I started using a virtual machine (VM) to run my tax software. I hope by sharing my motivation and method, those new to virtual machines will gain some exposure and find them useful in other endeavors. Since this tackles some advanced configuration, it may also be helpful to those trying to use VirtualBox outside its default configuration. Virtual machines are essentially a completely different computer running as software on a physical computer. They allow you to run a different operating system, test software without affecting your regular machine, and easily snapshot your machine state and restore it at a later time. One limitation is that running a VM will use about twice as much memory, since you're running another instance of an operating system and whatever applications. Another limitation is that performance can be reduced for certain things, for example graphics intensives tasks like games or 3D visualization.

Two different VM's running on my machine

My main motivation for using a virtual machine to do my taxes was that I wanted to be able to use the software from either my laptop or my desktop interchangeably. Normally, one might choose to install on the desktop then simply remote desktop into the desktop. However, I also wanted to be able to access the software while other people were using desktop. Allowing multiple users at the same time on a single machine with Windows normally requires a server edition or modifying Windows in a way that is not consistent with your license agreement (e.g. https://www.serverwatch.com/server-tutorials/remote-desktop-connections-for-multiple-users-on-windows-10-and-windows-server-2012.html).

Another perceived benefit was not having to untidy my desktop with new installations every year. Instead these are all within the virtual machine. Even better, if installing one version uninstalls the previous years software, I would only have to restore a snapshot to retrieve a state that had the correct software installed to amend a return.

Snapshots of a VM, showing multiple states that were "saved", that can be restored or branched from

One key feature I need to enable for my use case of using the virtual machine from any machine inside my house is Remote Display. This is a setting directly on the VM (not the guest OS) that allows me to directly Remote Desktop into the VM, even when somebody is using the host machine.

Another huge reason I chose to use a VM is because it is fun experimenting and playing with new and different things.

Next year, I might play with using a EC2 instance for this so that I don't need to dual purpose my gaming machines for this and worry about memory management.

Prologue

Another drawback of VMs, having to keep additional machines up-to-date: