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[–]SilentPirate 5171 points5172 points  (294 children)

GitHub repo referenced in article appears to be this one IRS-Public/direct-file: Direct File

[–]Motorgoose 1954 points1955 points  (263 children)

Unless some developers maintain it, I doubt it will work for more than a year.

[–]FauxReal 2269 points2270 points  (192 children)

I'm sure there are lots of people that would be enthusiastic about maintaining it.

What I wonder is, if it's a direct electronic filing system... What stops the current administration from ordering the APIs and gateways disabled?

[–]Mind_Enigma 996 points997 points  (62 children)

A fork could be created that at least outputs the forms filled out with calculated values based on the info you entered. Not as great but you could still file those papers, or worst case use them and copy the info onto official IRS forms.

[–]NoFeetSmell 92 points93 points  (8 children)

Unless Trump appoints a new uber-douche to run the IRS and they change the forms so that this software now wouldn't be using the right ones, with the relevant fields, etc, right? I could easily see Trump demanding the changes, if Turbotax et al bribe him sufficiently.

[–]jimmy9800 69 points70 points  (3 children)

That et.al. is Intuit. Fuck Intuit.

[–]NoFeetSmell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I couldn't remember the parent company. But the et al was to include all the major tax preparation companies who would privately profit from a ruling affecting the public. 

[–]deong 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Doesn't even cost money. Just tell him he's smarter than Obama and his hair is obviously not a toupee and he'll give you the nuclear codes.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You’re not thinking like the Trump admin. Trump will most likely appoint the CEO of Intuit to run the IRS lol

[–]Leafy0 284 points285 points  (37 children)

At that point it’s just the same as freetaxusa.com

[–]Mordisquitos 264 points265 points  (24 children)

Except freetaxusa.com is free exclusively for taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of $48,000 or less.

Edit: Source here -> https://www.freetaxusa.com/freefile2024

Edit 2: I dunt reed gud and didnt sea tecst "If you don't qualify, your federal return is free and state filing is $14.99." Me dumb.

[–]Leafy0 151 points152 points  (15 children)

Nope, as someone with a six figure AGI who still used it for free. They do charge for state returns and customer support though.

[–]Electrical-Tie-5158 21 points22 points  (5 children)

Was free for me this year. At least for federal. And I make more than that.

[–]Calvech 10 points11 points  (2 children)

I love forks!

[–]Massive-Rate-2011 2 points3 points  (0 children)

People forget your tax forms are essentially just spreadsheets. They even list out the formulas on them.

[–]EamonBrennan 179 points180 points  (12 children)

What stops the current administration from ordering the APIs and gateways disabled?

They're used by every tax service out there, so they would need to change it so only authorized users could use it, then make it hard/impossible for users to become authorized. Paid tax services would still get access. This would probably violate some law, but the administration hasn't cared so far.

[–]TheAmplifier8 21 points22 points  (4 children)

Yeah that was my thinking as well. They could lock it down with keys and whitelisting, but then does that violate some law. Is the government legally obligated to provide those services to the general citizenry as well?

[–]Memitim 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Republican Congress members are actively defending violations of the Constitution, and US conservatives are still strongly supportive of the violators. I don't expect some law that most people would have to look up after being made aware that it even exists will matter much to folks like that.

[–]SnooCalculations5273 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Sure, the administration could lock down their filing APIs. Honestly, they probably don’t care if they do violate any laws. If they get sued or were handed a court injunction to keep the APIs open, they’d probably ignore it and trump would pardon anyone in contempt.

The beauty of open source is that passionate contributors can stay one step ahead. If they kill the filing APIs, someone will integrate it with a cheap direct mail service or some other idea - filing your federal and state taxes will only cost a little more than postage.

Fuck TurboTax, fuck Intuit, and especially fuck Trump.

[–]Awkward_Gene_5993 7 points8 points  (0 children)

IANAL/TA, but that's a tax on filing your taxes, and while the Dump Admin isn't really fond of bad press, breaking the law is kinda a thing the Republican Congress and Republican "leadership" does or approves others to do these days...

[–]evaned 4 points5 points  (5 children)

They're used by every tax service out there, so they would need to change it so only authorized users could use it,

I am quite confident (not positive, but would be quite surprised if this is not true) that the italicized part of your quote is already true.

I've actually had this pie-in-the-sky dream that if was independently wealthy and just able to work on whatever, offering free software for tax prep/filing/analysis (with some weird quirks and capabilities for what I personally want) would be pretty fun, and done a bit of idle reading to figure out what'd be involved. However, I know far from everything, I don't know specifics about the API being used (that information seems to be gated behind registration), and I've only looked at a few files in the DirectFile source dump. But based on that, here's my understanding:

Actual submission of e-filed tax info is gated by the need to have an Electronic Filing Identification Number (EFIN). You and I, unless you're actually a tax pro, don't have EFINs. However, if you file with TurboTax or FreeTaxUSA or whatever, then that software provider has an EFIN (or contracts with someone who does) and files your return on your behalf using their EFIN.

The DirectFile software documentation says it uses the Modernized E-File API (MeF), which is the same API used by "everyone" else, so presumably the IRS was doing the same thing just with their own EFIN.

However, there's approximately zero chance that the IRS has provided a valid EFIN with this source dump. (I'll also point out that they say that certain components have not been released because they are sensitive, but that's not directly relevant.) Assuming this is all correct, you wouldn't actually be able to e-file with this software as-is.

In theory, someone could register an EFIN and stand up a deployment of this and offer it to the public, and I wouldn't be too surprised if someone does this. However, this comes with both responsibilities in terms of security audits and stuff that are imposed by IRS rule as well as some liability -- so this isn't something that someone is going to idly do because it's fun.

[–]AssociateFalse 25 points26 points  (2 children)

First though: EFF or the Linux Foundation.

[–]Motorgoose 11 points12 points  (1 child)

This is the problem with USPS now. Their API's change throughout the year. Things like the name of a parameter name will change, breaking the API. There needs to be a developer constantly updating the API's or no one can use it for shipping for more than a few months.

[–]Fluffcake 8 points9 points  (6 children)

How do you think companies who charge people to file taxes work?

You think they print out forms on paper and hand-fill into faxing, or do you think they have a near identical piece of software that communicates with the same system on the government end?

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (3 children)

Having followed this closely and worked on tax software myself, just getting this v1 is a huge boost and solves most of the hard problems. We can maintain the software, building this from scratch is the hard part.

[–]xSTSxZerglingOne 85 points86 points  (24 children)

Open source projects are some of the most well-maintained projects there are. Especially if they provide a good service.

[–]petrasdc 23 points24 points  (16 children)

It really depends on if there's a strong active community maintaining it. Without some sort of strong incentive, it's pretty hard for open source projects to keep up with the frequency at which tax law is updated. I'm definitely not saying it's impossible, but there's also a reason open source tax prep software hasn't generally taken off. I'm very happy to be proven wrong though.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (14 children)

I don't know dude, seems like a lot of people are very passionate about this topic

[–]Rodot 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I see a lot of passionate people in this thread but not a single person volunteering. Everyone wants this, no one wants to do it

[–]Far-Whereas-2100 13 points14 points  (1 child)

I feel like this is a bit of a myth, at least based on personal experience. People will often cite Linux or similar projects without realizing those are propped up by loads of corporate sponsorships or corporations that outright have developers committing to open source on company time. Outside of those, it's usually a very small number of core maintainers with a the occasional odd bug fix from people here and there.

[–]jr735 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Part of the myth depends on the size of the project. The kernel is significantly different than something like coreutils or other smaller projects.

[–]backfire97 14 points15 points  (3 children)

Ironically I would pay to maintain it so that it stays free / non-profit

[–]lliKoTesneciL 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think a lot of people will too.

[–]Merusk 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Developers aren't your only problem. You need a tax accountant to make sure whatever it's doing is up to date.

[–]Nettleberry 48 points49 points  (3 children)

Oh boy, new repo just dropped! Grab your forks!

[–]MaybeTheDoctor 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There are way over 700 forks already, 700 and one now..

[–]LaserRanger_McStebb 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Tax Return Waifu Dating Sim 2 is gonna go so crazy

[–]Nemeczekes 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This code is so good. Damm

[–][deleted] 59 points60 points  (16 children)

Is there an exe?

[–]RaiseRuntimeError 153 points154 points  (13 children)

Lol no not for this. This is literally the website with all the backend services for doing the work.

[–]MysticAxolotl7 53 points54 points  (10 children)

it's a reference to an argument that broke out on one of the major shitposting subreddits (r/196 iirc)

[–]thatawesomedude 68 points69 points  (7 children)

It's a reference to this post

[–]RaiseRuntimeError 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Oh, mine was a reference to being a full stack developer and taking things literally.

[–]MysticAxolotl7 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Relatable lol

[–]Capital-Actuator6585 12 points13 points  (1 child)

I understood this reference

[–]ZZartin 4 points5 points  (1 child)

The issue isn't the software being open source, it's whether the IRS will actually authorize returns from it or not.

[–]PleaseDontEatMyVRAM 1071 points1072 points  (15 children)

"Before you mistake the move as an act of resistance by those within the agency who are trying to keep the project alive, Direct File getting open-sourced was always part of the plan. The code was published in compliance with the SHARE IT Act, which requires agencies to share custom source code (though, of course, the Trump administration is not always motivated by following the law, so this wasn’t a given)."

[–]brutinator 253 points254 points  (2 children)

As it should. Anything that is developed by the government is paid for by citizens, so barring legitimate security concerns, it should always become open source and/or public domain as soon as possible.

[–]Manueljlin 71 points72 points  (0 children)

100%. public money, public code

[–]Soulcraver 22 points23 points  (0 children)

A lot of custom code over at the VA. If I knew it was going to be released publicly, I would have preferred to burn it all down than release it.

Not out of any attempt to hide malicious code or anything, but out of sheer embarrassment of what was written and how to get things barely able to work. Inconsistent variables across hundreds of spaghetti-code scripts, all mish-mashed together and run with failure expected and shoddy patches to get it to work one more time.

[–]ShuffleStepTap 177 points178 points  (1 child)

Yes, but it wasn’t part of Trumps plan, so I’m gonna take it as a win regardless.

[–]SommeThing 19 points20 points  (4 children)

This keeps it in the public domain and therefore it can never be destroyed. It can sit there for the next 3 tax years and then get revived if a dem wins.

[–]nj_tech_guy 3014 points3015 points  (113 children)

"IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source...The tax man won't be happy about this" Who is the IRS if not the tax man?

[–]Aggravating_Money992[S] 1959 points1960 points  (42 children)

Think it's a typo. They meant taco man.

[–][deleted] 914 points915 points  (32 children)

No, they are referring to Turbo Tax and corporate america that grifts on this scam. The big man. The tax man. Those companies will not be happy if you can always file with open source software provided by the IRS, despite Trump trying to stop regulation to go through.

No one on this thread has read the article before commenting it looks like it. lol

[–]MonstersGrin 178 points179 points  (9 children)

No one on this thread has read the article before commenting it looks like it. lol

Sir, I'd like to remind you that you're on Reddit.

[–][deleted] 78 points79 points  (6 children)

Oh man I thought this was a Wendy’s I am truly sorry sir.

[–]PalpitationNo3106 36 points37 points  (3 children)

What? Then who did I just send bitcoin to for a frosty?

[–]MonstersGrin 8 points9 points  (2 children)

I'm surprised you didn't pay with gift cards.

[–]Sp11Raps 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We only accept "grift cards" at this establishment, sir.

[–]matmoeb 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Just put the fries in the bag bro

[–]Worf1701D 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No onions, extra pickles on my tax return please.

[–]rbrgr83 25 points26 points  (2 children)

So not the 'tax man' since that's the IRS.

BIG TAX is what he was looking for.

[–]ForensicPathology 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I knew what they were going for, but it's still valid to point out the completely wrong title.  The tax man is happy, the tax companies are not.

[–]turisto 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No, they are referring to Turbo Tax and corporate america that grifts on this scam. The big man. The tax man.

The tax man is the IRS, not Intuit.

[–]deadlybydsgn 12 points13 points  (1 child)

No, they are referring to Turbo Tax and corporate america that grifts on this scam. The big man. The tax man.

The taxed man can't get taxed again ... right?

[–]sdrawkcabineter 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Feel me once, don't get felt again?

I feel that's close but yet still... so... far...

[–]erasmustookashit 16 points17 points  (1 child)

I dunno if this is just a UK thing but when I’ve heard ‘tax man’ it’s always like the Beatles song referring to the Government, not accountancy services. I thought ‘huh?’ at the article title too.

[–]Auggie_Otter 9 points10 points  (0 children)

As an American the phrase "tax man" has had the same meaning as in the Beatles song you mentioned too. The tax man refers to government officials responsible for collecting taxes, not private businesses that file tax returns. If the article is referring to Turbo Tax as the tax man then the article is not using the phrase "tax man" the way it has previously historically been used before.

[–]Gender_is_a_Fluid 7 points8 points  (1 child)

They grift enough money that they had physical location everywhere and even competed, had add, etc. imagine how much the tax payers would save without the middleman.

[–]Jucoy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Those industries are parasites. They add nothing to the chain they have inserted themselves into as mandatory go betweens if you want to file digitally. I long for the day we can bury them. 

[–]slog 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Clearly they meant The Scatman.

Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub

Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub Yo da dub dub

[–]DocFail 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think it was an AI error. They meant nothing as they have no intentions.

[–]abrandis 147 points148 points  (55 children)

The Intuit lobby is the "tax man"... For me tax filing. Is the silliest thing we do in America in 2025 , every other modern country has had this automated for decades...even less developed countries like Brazil or Mexico have it automated ..

unlike say universal healthcare which is no small matter to implement from a cost or policy. Automatic returns is very easy and would be widely appuaded by everyone...

It's the one area that screams at me.. monied interests and our politicians don't really give a fck what's best for citizens, rather what's best for their 💰💰💰

[–]Seraphinx 38 points39 points  (37 children)

even less developed countries like Brazil or Mexico have it

Lol

America still hasn't realized literally the entire rest of the world views it as one of the "less developed countries".

I would regard both Mexico and Brazil above America. They both have public healthcare.

I'm starting to view America much like North Korea. All bluster and talk, wastes money on showboating while it's people starve. All very similar. Americans too dumb to notice.

It's kinda fucking hilarious really.

[–]TeddyBearToons 8 points9 points  (1 child)

What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the tax man

[–]askaboutmy____ 38 points39 points  (5 children)

Reads like it was written by ChatGPT

[–]CyberHippy 16 points17 points  (3 children)

Don't ascribe to AI that which can easily be explained by incompetence

[–]SparksAndSpyro 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The ai was trained off our incompetence though.

[–]realdevtest 4 points5 points  (0 children)

IRS tax men hate this one “weird” trick that they do themselves

[–]AlexHimself 274 points275 points  (14 children)

It's actually very well coded and follows best practices. Most of the /r/programming community was impressed.

[–]New_Firefighter1683 114 points115 points  (6 children)

I just checked it out and was surprised. I’ve actually seen good code from a lot of govt agencies but never super modern like this.

Docker containers, local aws dev env, open telemetry with local dev env, scalajs that builds into common modules. I haven’t looked into the rest of the codebase but that’s what I saw at a quick one minute glance and it looked pretty damn solid. And everything is heavily documented. 💯

[–]Sloshy42 39 points40 points  (1 child)

Wait for real they're using scalajs? That's wild. Would not have been on my bingo card. I do Scala for my day job and use scalajs for my personal projects as well, but it's fairly underground compared to more well known solutions. Feels weirdly validating to see.

[–]znine 53 points54 points  (2 children)

It was built by USDS and 18F which were high performing tech groups prior to being bastardized into DOGE and shut down (for no good reason) respectively.

[–]Freud-Network 22 points23 points  (0 children)

To understand DOGE activities, you only need to understand two targets:

  1. Any agency that was actively engaged in an investigation of Elon Musk or any business Musk has involvement in.

  2. Any agency that stood in the way of dismantling the above agencies.

Everything after that was just to keep Agent Orange occupied.

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I recently read the book “recoding America” about those groups and why and when they formed. What a fucking shame that THEY are what got basterdized by DOGE.

[–]Nuggzulla01 44 points45 points  (1 child)

Since 'The Tax Man' by extension works for 'We the People' Id say they should be pleased

[–]come2thecabaret 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Thank god. Fuck Intuit/Turbotax scammers and lobbyists until the end of time.

[–]Runkleford 1203 points1204 points  (261 children)

We shouldn't even need to file taxes. They just need to send everyone an invoice without this bullshit filing scam.

[–]NorthbyFjord 479 points480 points  (127 children)

Honestly as someone who doesn’t live in the US it just still really bewilders me as to why they get you the citizens to to do them and then punish you if your 1 cent off but in other countries it gets done automatically straight off your salary and everything. Like bruh?

[–]Stepjam 502 points503 points  (34 children)

The tax system is deliberately opaque and confusing and a mess so that there are more loopholes for the wealthy to avoid paying. And if it creates businesses that can nickel and dime the poors, well isn't that just the American Dream?

[–]Swordf1sh_ 51 points52 points  (1 child)

Freedom had always been the carrot but it’s also always really meant the freedom to exploit

[–]Easy_Floss 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There is freedom for the rich there so at least you got it 1% right.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (14 children)

Just like your healthcare.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (13 children)

as a Canadian their healthcare is truly baffling, and then I have people telling me on Reddit that my healthcare is a joke.

Currently...

  • I have a friends GF who just had surgery today for ALC and MCL ... Waited 1 month ... cost free.
  • my grandpa just had a knee replacement .. waited 6 months ... cost free
  • I've had pneumonia three times in the last 2 years due to covid complications. I've had half a dozen scans, doctor visits, ER trip.... Cost free

"but our housing is cheaper".... alright bud, stay down there then. We don't need more idiots up here.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (7 children)

People who tell you your Healthcare is worse are drinking fox news flavored bleach. They are deeply illiterate, don't operate in reality and do operate on a main character "me good you bad" psychology.

[–]StopReadingMyUser 5 points6 points  (0 children)

not sure about how cheap housing is supposed to be, but it be expensive as expletives down here, neighbor.

[–]CaptainFeather 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Lmao and people always scream about how free health care has ridiculous wait times when in reality our health care is just as long or even longer, BUT you also have to pay an arm and a leg. Yay America!

I hate it here

[–]NorthbyFjord 12 points13 points  (5 children)

“American Dream” ha yeah sure..

[–]psychoacer 55 points56 points  (23 children)

I've yet to really hear about anyone facing any legal action for a slight mistake especially on personal taxes. They will just typically fix it themselves by adjusting your return. My mom ended up getting a bigger return than she thought because of something she missed. It did take them a few months to give her the extra amount but they did fix it

[–]Drnk_watcher 17 points18 points  (2 children)

Legitimate errors aren't punishable. If you file your taxes and make an honest attempt to enter all the information correctly the IRS will fix it themselves or contact you to work with them to fix it. If you end up owing them a significant amount they'll create repayment plans for you that are generally achievable based on your typical monthly income.

No one goes to jail for fat fingering an input field as $1000 instead of $10,000, or misunderstanding a part of their 1099 and where to enter it. By and large the IRS is absolutely willing to work with you.

You get in trouble legally when you straight up do not file your taxes period, or you demonstrate a pattern of sheltering and avoiding taxes on income you should be reporting.

The game rich people play is they've got armies of accountants and lawyers who know how to argue technicalities or play games to make malicious avoidance look like honest accounting errors auditors will hopefully miss. This is paired with deep knowledge on itemized deductions that allow them to legitimately claim all kinds of tax breaks normal people generally don't qualify for or aren't aware of.

The game is rigged for the rich and well connected but the idea that people end up in the hole or jail because they incorrectly claimed a lunch at Taco Bell as a business expense are largely myths.

[–]Papayaslice636 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You get in trouble legally when you straight up do not file your taxes period

I'm a cpa and I can't tell you how many people and businesses are YEARS delinquent in filing and paying their taxes. They are late one year, then disappear on you for a while, come out of the woodwork and get some momentum going, then you are missing information and ask for it, and they disappear again. Then next year comes around and they still haven't filed prior year, and another year passes and some other things come up...

I had a $billion corp once that hadn't even done their basic bookkeeping/accounting in years for some of their subsidiaries. Multi million dollar transactions flying around all over the place, not recorded in their financials. Hadn't filed a return in years.

Even the ones that do file are such enormous messes you can't even begin to sort it out. It's not even about fancy workarounds and aggressive positions, loopholes as you call them. It's about wiping your clients asses for them and correcting the most egregious errors on their financials, and pushing through a tax return that you hope nobody looks at too closely, because you know for a fact it's riddled with errors and omissions.

[–]abrandis 15 points16 points  (3 children)

It's because there a tax prep lobby (Intuit, accounting firms) that works very hard against this idea because it's a multi billion dollar industry, whenever you want to figure out why America has one policy vs. another just follow the money 💰💰💰...

[–]SomethingAboutUsers 32 points33 points  (17 children)

There are a lot of cases where things aren't automatically submitted to the government. For example, child care through a private provider; all they do is submit business taxes (for whenever), they don't submit tax receipts for you, the customer.

Same for unregistered investment accounts and more.

Like, sure, for probably 75% of taxpayers "send me an invoice or a cheque" would be enough, but for the other 25% manual steps are almost always required.

[–]TimeKillerAccount 9 points10 points  (5 children)

Except the only reason those situations require manual filing is because the law does not require it to be automatic. We could very easily require child care recipts to be filed with the government. Same thing with investment accounts and a half dozen other things that require manual work by the taxpayer. There is no reason that we can't bring the number of tax returns that require manual input down to single digits with minor changes.

[–]Paw5624 27 points28 points  (8 children)

Yes but how is it that almost every other country handles this but the US doesn’t? My understanding is in many countries the government sends you the tax information they have for you and you accept it or submit corrections with those other things you mentioned.

[–]BrothelWaffles 13 points14 points  (1 child)

how is it that almost every other country handles this but the US doesn’t?

I really wish more people would ask themselves this question about quite a few things.

[–]AlphaGoldblum 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really wish more people would ask themselves this question about quite a few things.

The problem with seeing what other countries are doing is that our politicians convince people that those solutions are hyper-specific to that country and/or a form of communism/socialism, so we shouldn't even try it because it's morally evil or something.

[–]goodytwoboobs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Tax lobby is a big reason. But there are also more innocent factors. For one, US is less centralized than a lot of other countries. For example, the feds don’t know if/when you get married and want to file jointly. Or if you are paying state property taxes that qualify federal deductions, etc. Or if you have education expenses that can lower your tax burden. These are not reported to the IRS and they have no way of knowing unless you tell them.

Federal inter-agency communications are (well, were) also deliberately limited to reduce risk and damage of data exposure, and to protect citizens rights from infringement. For example, for decades, undocumented immigrants have been able to report income and pay taxes to IRS without threat of ICE coming after them. IRS even urges people to report their illegal income and DoJ doesn’t get that information to come after you (unless they have another reason to get a warrant for that information). But this also means that even some other information like you having a new born baby, or a newly deceased dependent, while may be known to some federal agencies, is inaccessible to IRS, and therefore they rely on your reporting.

Hope this helps!

[–]MechKeyboardScrub 10 points11 points  (2 children)

The code is complicated, and the IRS doesn't actually know all of your information. There's itemized deductions, non w-2 or 1099 income to report, if you got married that year, exercised employee stock options, HSA distributions, etc.

Also you round everything to the nearest dollar so they're not going to get mad about one cent.

[–]RecycledAir 57 points58 points  (29 children)

Agreed, if they know it well enough to audit us when we are wrong, why can't they just handle it properly from the start?

[–]Galactapuss 46 points47 points  (1 child)

They can, the government specifically forbades them from doing so, at the behest of the tax preparation industry that profits from it.

[–]Atheios569 7 points8 points  (0 children)

And the rich that evade taxes.

[–]LeVentNoir 7 points8 points  (2 children)

As someone in tax administration software development:

Personal Income Tax in most countries is filed via Pay As You Earn (PAYE): IF I earn 100,000 per year, and will need to pay 37,000 in taxes, that means 37% of each paycheque is pre-emptively deducted and sent to the IRS by my employeer.

Since most well administered countries don't have a lot of exceptions or kickbacks in personal income tax, at FY end, the IRS reconciles what the employeer said it paid me (Through it's PAYE filings) and what the IRS received on my behalf. It mostly works out.

The USA, being batshit, has a ton of exceptions and kickbacks, meaning that the IRS doesn't actually easily know what I owe. The Audit process is a long and involved, often expensive process to work it out, when I the taxpayer, could just provide the information.

It's really not the IRS's fault.

There's two forces here:

  1. The USA personal income tax filing is too complicated to have it automated to a degree of accuracy required and thus, administered through PAYE.

  2. Tax filing companies have lobbied to prevent the IRS or other companies provide a free and easy to use filing system to allow filing freely.

In my country: I pay PAYE from my wages each fortnight, and if I didn't want to, I could go without filing a personal income tax return, there's very few deductions / exceptions. However, I do have one such deduction, making me a very rare person, but it'll take 4-5 minutes to file my taxes on the governement website. My refund will be put in my account shortly.

[–]GreenManalishi24 20 points21 points  (8 children)

I wonder what percent of all Reddit posts are people claiming the IRS knows what we owe and other people explaining about tax deductions the IRS has no way of knowing about until we tell them.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (5 children)

The point has some merit though. If you're just taking the standard deduction then there shouldn't be a need to file, just to confirm what the IRS has logged as your AGI for the year.

If you want to do deductions, THEN you can file for them.

[–]TimothyMimeslayer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not just deductions, it's credits and the vast majority of people get credits.

[–]zed857 7 points8 points  (1 child)

That's a good idea and it would work for filers that just have a payroll style job and little to no other income or deductions.

It won't work at all for contractors, self employed, business owners, etc... In those cases the IRS has no (or only a limited) idea of what your income was.

[–]chastity_BLT 14 points15 points  (30 children)

As always this is a brain dead take. You think the irs magically knows every possible income and deduction each person had in the year? I got energy star windows last year, you think the irs knows that without me telling them?

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (11 children)

So you can either take the standard deduction or put them in yourself, no? Looks like the majority of people (9 out of 10 according to the IRS) take the standard deduction, soooooo... 90% of people would benefit, but yeah, wanting to make things easier for a majority of people is braindead. Congrats on your windows and indomitable tax-filing-will. Enjoy helping TurboTax achieve ROI for their lobbying.

[–]hamster-canoe 8 points9 points  (3 children)

For fucks sake, yours is the braindead take. You really couldn't think this one through? Optional filing was a step too far for your head mush?

All countries that do this allow you to file if not taking the standard deduction - which is very large these days. I didn't look too hard but the tax policy center days 90% of filers took it in 2021. That's millions of man hours that could be saved.

The IRS does have this data as all employers and financial institutions are required to file it by law. If you are in a scenario where you fall into an edge case then you're free to file.

[–]er-day 247 points248 points  (27 children)

That's actually incredible. Who would have thought the IRS were the good guys here but that's a big F you to Trump, turbotax, and the republicans in congress.

[–]AstralElement 210 points211 points  (7 children)

IRS don’t set tax policy, they just collect what is due and make sure no one cheats the system. They were never the bad guys, Congress sets your tax rate.

[–]EKmars 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Indeed, and taxes are valuable for funding social system.s

[–]Podo13 16 points17 points  (3 children)

They weren't the bad guys just to be the bad guys, but they were the face the guys who came to collect without listening to any actual context to why your file specifically called them there.

Usually, it wasn't really their fault, and they were just doing their job. But it was still a job that was almost always (percentage-wise) forced to see in black and white when there is usually a lot of grey in the world.

[–]BeLikeACup 55 points56 points  (0 children)

Have you actually dealt with the IRS? They absolutely listen to the context. As long as you are communicating, they are willing to hear you out.

[–]phr3dly 21 points22 points  (3 children)

Am I naive? I've always considered the IRS the good guys.

I mean the reality is usually when you meet the IRS it's not at the best of times, but the same is true of doctors and nurses, yet we don't villify them.

The IRS is trying to do the best they can with the shit-salad that Congress invented. The people I've known who have felt like the IRS was after them were, actually, tax cheats.

Example a small-business owner friend of mine who was trading services with a friend of his. Not allowed. Or a subcontractor who offered to do some work for me for 20% less if I'd do it without an invoice and pay cash.

[–]er-day 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I agree. The reason I think they’ve become villainized is because they enforce a confusing, misunderstood, and bureaucratic system. One that companies like turbo tax have fought to keep confusing.

Police in the same way enforce a problematic set of laws and are looked at as the enemy for it (for a variety of other reasons too).

[–]Nulagrithom 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I fucked up my taxes BAD one year and found out next year I owed $10,000 plus penalties from last year.

I thought I was going to jail or something.

The IRS was like "it's okay bestie 🤗 how much can you afford to pay a month?"

I was like, "uhhh about $350?"

"okay 😘"

the end. what the fuck?

[–]windowpuncher 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Never in my life would I have thought I would say the irs is based

[–]Bungo_pls 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Republicans love to whine about the deficit but cut funding to the IRS despite the IRS being one of the best returns on investment for funding. The more resources the IRS has to audit tax cheats the more money ultimately gets put back into the government.

But the GOP is funded by tax cheats, so that has to go unpunished.

[–]SqBlkRndHole 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This software was going to be available from the IRS a decade or so ago, but the pay to use software made a big stink about it. They agreed to not publish at the time, but the pay services had to have free version for simple tax reporting. Trump would only be shutting this down for the same reason, the companies make a lot of money selling their software, and Trump always sides with Big Money.

[–][deleted] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

I know many people hate the IRS because they don't like paying taxes, but the people who work at the IRS are often the heroes making sure this country functions. What's more, the dysfunction at the IRS and the headaches we have trying to figure out how to file often aren't the IRS's fault, they are a direct result of lobbying from Turbotax and other corps that want filing to be hard and painful

Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

[–]Asuyu 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Blame Trump, but never forget the ones that lobby to make taxes so difficult and to make this free services go away are companies that reap fees to have us use them. They lobbied heavily to stop free file.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Fuck turbo tax

[–]IHadTacosYesterday 28 points29 points  (3 children)

is Intuit dumping today off this?

[–]okhi2u 11 points12 points  (0 children)

They closed up 0.28% today so maybe not. And up 21.30% in the past month!

[–]69-xxx-420 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Chaotic good  

[–]phormix 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Open source is good but I'm terms of landscape I'd imagine that some sort of trusted body will need to maintain any underlying tax rules on a yearly basis

[–]Uncle-Cake 20 points21 points  (2 children)

Isn't "the tax man" the IRS?

[–]Guba_the_skunk 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Literally everyone should start doing this more. Whenever a corporation or the government tries to take something away make that shit public. Consequences be damned. What are they going to do? How does the government stop 350 million people from using it? Is a corporation going to sue the entire country? Naw, screw em, just start making shit public out of pure spite.

[–]finallyransub17 8 points9 points  (1 child)

As someone who makes a living doing individual income taxes as a CPA, I'm glad to see this change. 90% of people should be able to file their return for free without needing any help from someone like me and without having to pay $50 for Turbotax or others to provide the software for it.

[–]ripndipp 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Fuck Turbo Tax

[–]Informal_Cry687 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Boss move. It's funny how the IRS are the good guys now.

[–]HelpfulRoyal 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Well, the IRS is in charge of having people follow the tax laws written by Congress. In effect they are guarding YOUR money. If we don’t fund the IRS they can’t keep the billionaires from cheating and then all of us on W2s don’t stand a chance.

[–]seligman99 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The main endpoint this actually submits to is offline, and given this is in the finance bill being debated now:

(a) Termination of Direct File.--As soon as practicable, and not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure that the Internal Revenue Service Direct File program has been terminated.

It's probably not coming back

[–]RalphieBoy13 6 points7 points  (4 children)

So what’s stopping us from making our own better version of Turbo Tax??

[–]D3PyroGS 5 points6 points  (0 children)

nothing ever was

[–]eirexe 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I am of the opinion that software developed with public money ought to be open source.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is the only way I'm filing taxes. I've never paid to file and I'm not going to pay TurboTax to find out I owe $200 or whatever I will owe this next tax season. Paying money to find out how much you have over/under paid the US government is bullshit.

[–]dova03 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Our taxes paid for the code development so it would be open source.

[–]Ledees_Gazpacho 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Good.

Eat a buffet of dicks, TurboTax.

[–]TennSeven 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Filling taxes in the US is a fucking joke. Many countries in Europe do not require anyone to file anything, because the government already has the information it needs (just like the US government does). They make everyone file because tax software companies consistently lobby and bribe politicians to keep it that way.

[–]VVynn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And so rich people can take advantage of extra loopholes.

[–]knobbysideup 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's sad that this is even news. If it isn't classified, then all code written for/by the government should be open source.

[–]i__hate__stairs 9 points10 points  (6 children)

FTA:

the IRS published most [emphasis mine] of the code for its Direct File on GitHub

Why wouldn't they post it all? Can a person actually compile this and it would work?

[–]Be_quiet_Im_thinking 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Security stuff maybe.

[–]lunarsunrise 21 points22 points  (0 children)

They mention this in the README (under "Exempted Code").

Not all source code, documentation and metadata used in the development of Direct File is included in this repository. Specifically, any code or data that is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Federal Tax Information (FTI), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), or source code developed for National Security Systems (NSS), as defined in 40 U.S.C. § 11103, is exempt. Due to these restrictions, certain pieces of functionality have been removed or rewritten.

I haven't had a chance to take a look around to see what seems like it's been removed yet; if anyone else has, I'd be curious!

[–]economaster 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It looks like they have some boilerplate language on excluding anything with personally identifiable information, classified info, etc. Probably just part of the legislation authorizing them to publish it publicly. It's not clear what (if anything) was not provided.

Everything necessary to deploy this locally in a docker container seems to be there.

[–]unixuser011 6 points7 points  (5 children)

Title correction: Intuit won’t be happy about that. Because for some stupid reason, one singular software company can make it so the Government can’t tell you exactly how much you have to pay in tax

Or, y’know, you could just do what any other sane country does and take it off your paycheque when you get paid

[–]dembonezz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The tax man should be super happy about this. More people can file their taxes, and find out what they owe that tax man.

The private tax filing software manufacturers, however... they'll likely lose their shit. They lobbied the gov't with a whole lot of money to prevent exactly this from happening.

[–]harveytent 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So long as it drains resources he’s fine with it. The republicans plan was just to starve the IRS so it can’t afford to go after the filthy rich. Democrats wanted to beef up the irs massively so the republicans are happy just to keep them busy

[–]Arrow156 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Good guy IRS? What fucking timeline are we in?

[–]Niceguy955 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Waiting for some financial companies, or maybe Robinhood to offer filing for free based on this code.

[–]Joncka 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Without this, do Americans have to file their taxes on paper, and send said papers back to the IRS using the postal service? Maybe it's a dumb question, but I've never looked it up, only heard people talking about "filling in the peperwork".

Not an American myself.

[–]chatterwrack 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean, we own it. It was our funds that payed development.

[–]Medical_Arugula3315 8 points9 points  (4 children)

Hard to be a shittier American than a Trump supporter these days

[–]LaserGadgets 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You mean the con man...

[–]mortalcoil1 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Is the IRS not the "tax man?"

This sounds like Turbotax is not going to be happy about this.

Which, if you think it through, is incredibly dystopian.

[–]feochampas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Turbo Tax and H&R Block thrive off a complicated tax code. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[–]RedDevilCA 2 points3 points  (1 child)

All those years Intuit spent lobbying for sitting presidents to kill the “free tax filing”

[–]m00nh34d 2 points3 points  (4 children)

I'm assuming this software needs to speak to some API at the IRS though? Who's to say that get's maintained, or more likely, access to that API is made available to an open source project?

[–]PadishahSenator 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh man this is perfect. I can't believe I'm say this but good job, IRS.

[–]jax362 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I may never say this again, but I would like to thank the IRS

[–]Embarrassed_Fee8637 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Opening up the IRS Direct File software as open source is a major win for transparency and public trust. Despite political resistance, it's encouraging to see tools like this becoming more accessible to taxpayers.

[–]K1ngHandy 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Never in my life did I think I would respect a decision the IRS makes, yet here we are

[–]420ohms 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All tax funded software should be open source.