I've seen this bug repeatedly:
When building, I adjust the "Hollow" setting from zero to some other value. As soon as I change the "Hollow" setting, both x and y values for "Taper" are immediately set to 1.0, regardless of what other value they had previously.
This only happens when the "Hollow" value was initially zero. No subsequent adjustments to the "Hollow" value change either of the "Taper" field values.
This one is really nasty to work with while you're trying to build things, as it has a profound and unexpected affect on the prim you're trying to reshape.
I've seen the effect both on the Windows and Linux clients, so it's not a platform specific bug.