"Direct File interprets the United States' Internal Revenue Code (26 USC) as plain language questions, the answers to which should be known to taxpayers without need of external instructions or publications. Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use."
So in theory it's useful now, but as you say it could easily change.
For example I installed Solar panels many years ago and read the exact wording on the Solar Tax Credit to try to figure out if you could include roof repairs under the panels in the credit. The wording was something like "all costs associated with a solar install". Every installer I talked to said yes, but it seemed dubious so I tried calling the IRS help line to get the answer and the help line was no help at all. A few years later and some court battles lost and that answer is now firmly a "no", making me glad I ignored the installer's advice.
How is tax prep software supposed to handle a situation like that? Some of the for pay options include "audit protection", but I don't know how far that goes. I guess you can attempt to pass all liability on to the customer, but even that seems a bit risky.
And definitely the IRS has its own jargon that doesn't always make sense to the layperson. Why, for example, is a form that you fill out once per tax year called a "schedule"? It doesn't organize anything by date or time!
More fundamentally: how are the citizens who pay the salaries of the people writing the rules supposed to handle a situation like that?
Legislation very often has a bunch of them at the back, referred to from the main text.
Now I'm trying to remember how long ago I got my panels installed...
It's almost as if Republicans weren't actually pushing for a smaller, cheaper, government.
However, it is most likely that the people claiming EITC are the least likely to understand the information there
Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.
The companies Intuit will have to buy out don't have to make any profit per filer, they just have to take filers away from Inuit.
But, realistically, I guess if a self-service tax prep company messed up your taxes, they’d make sure you end up in arbitration.
This wouldn't replace human judgment; nobody in power would allow that. But even the capriciousness of politics can be expressed as Boolean logic (var isDeductible = taxpayerIsMe && !taxpayerIsYou). The tests could at least memorialize all the pork.
I agree that this would be nice, however. as a non-lawyer and someone who considers themself to be not a "real" developer (even though I write software every day) I have often wondered how alike law and code are, really, when it comes to defining intent via a keyboard.
Or a unit test that determines whether the discussion during a meal with a customer was "substantially about business matters".
The function you ask about would be "getDeductiblePercentage()," and the unit tests would return various hard coded numbers. Actually determining that value for a real taxpayer is still hard.
Being able to show how information flows through the US tax code would be useful, even if it doesn't solve all the problems that arise from its intricacy.
Anything more complex is an input to the system, the system can still be tested.
The interoperability with the revenue system is provided by a different project, and this API is also used by turbotax and the like. It won't be going away.
The interoperability is not the hard part.
There could also be pushes to monetize the API, "Why is this service free!?". Meaning they'd likely require a need to be incorporated, setup a commercial account with them, and have payment method on file, and on and on.
My point is, I can think of dozens of sneaky ways to make that pesky API go away, and I'm not even trying.
Imagine pair programming with a tax lawyer. I'd rather eat my own hands.
You pay the bill they send you, you are done.
I have a reasonably simple personal economy and it takes me all of five minutes to file my taxes in Sweden. My parents have a much more complicated setup (small private business, own a couple of properties, several deductions, etc.) and it basically is pretty straight-forward for them as well, certainly they don't need an accountant.
TurboTax, Intuit and anti-tax Republicans has really fucked with the US expectation of how complicated taxes needs to be.
Yes, keep telling yourself they don't (for what it matters)
In fact if you get a W2 the IRS already have it
Just think what someone with a gazillion dollars, some trusts, and "charitable foundations" could do.
But if by law something needs to be known by the government: just go for it
A silly analogy: your medical info is private, but it's in your best interest that a condition like 'diabetic' or 'allergic to something' have a lower level of privacy
> But if by law something needs to be known by the government: just go for it
This seems a bit flipped, the only reason something needs to be provided to the government “by law” is that we’ve passed a law that says it needs to be. That it is required by law is not a reason for it being required of course, that’s circular. The reason the law was passed is because we decided it was in the public interest for the government to collect that data.
If we decided it was in the public interest to collect more income info about wealthy people, then we could make that required by law. I think the comment you responded to is suggesting that we should change what is required by law.
Your analogy is better. There’s a reason you might be ok with less privacy there.
Every company has to file tax returns and pay employee taxes already, and employs accountants and finance people for that purpose.
In 2021, I filed my 2020 taxes, and a few months later I get a letter from the IRS saying that I owed $8000 because I forgot to report a large stock transaction. I owed $7000 + a $1000 fine.
I wasn't mad at all about the $7000, I definitely owed that and it was just an oversight on my end, these things happen, and I was able to get the fine lowered by calling the IRS [1], so that wasn't a huge deal .
What did annoy me was why do I have to do anything? If the IRS knows about the transaction and is able to complain about me not paying enough, that suggests that they already have the information that I'm sending them. Why make me buy software and copy information from a piece of paper into that software, just for the IRS to check it against the numbers that they already have?
I understand that you might need to issue corrections, and maybe the software should exist for something like that, but it doesn't seem like it should exist otherwise.
[1] Who at least in my case was actually really polite and helpful! I had heard horror stories but that was definitely not the case for me. The people I talked to were very sympathetic and nice.
There are two reasons. 1) Because Intuit owns enough reps to keep their business existing. 2) They have a fairly easy time doing that because the Republican party explicitly believes that taxes should be painful to discourage America from having functioning taxes.
All the "IRS might not know everything about you" is distraction. That's not a problem in any of the countries that have no trouble sending you a preliminary document for you to amend or accept. It's FUD.
For a long time the IRS was literally barred from doing what TurboTax does.
You mistakenly assume that simply knowing what is on the 1099-B form is sufficient to determine your tax on the gain. They don't know if you are married or single or head of household (filing status) in the current tax year. They don't know what some of your itemized deductions and other income not reported to them might be (which in turn, along with filing status, determines what marginal tax bracket you are in). They don't know if you are actually just a nominee for someone else's income. These are just a few examples. They don't know any of this stuff until you tell them by filing your complete return.
I think you're misinterpreting the GP's point. Clearly, at least in our current system, it is essential to tell the IRS the parts of the return that they don't already know such as what are your expenses, deductions, marital status, etc.
But the absurd thing is that the capture of the IRS by the paid tax prep scammers has prevented them from simply showing you what's on your tax transcripts and having you click "Agree" or "Modify" for each one. Instead, you get your own copy of the 1099-B, 1099-DIV, 1099-INTs, and are administered a pointless "honesty test" to see if you'll type in the same numbers they have, or be automatically punished.
Obviously, Direct File was ideally situated to offer this feature since IRS has the data themselves, and simply populating the numbers is a highly efficient way of ingesting the data into your return.
Under Biden, the IRS tried to make w2s and 1099s available. If you log into the IRS website with your information, you can download the w2s and 1099s the Service has in your name.
Antitax activists have fought these steps every step of the way because the less annoying tax filing is, the less people will buy their antitax arguments.
The IRS isn’t captured by these predatory tax preparers, Congress is. The IRS can’t do a lot on data without Congress specifically authorizing it. And the Republican Party is in bed with the antitax activists who are in bed with the tax preparation companies.
Use Form 4506-T to request them.
(They can detect that you had a sale for which they got a 1099-B but you didn’t list on your Schedule D. That doesn’t mean they have enough information to fix it.)
I'm not doing anything clever to try and lower my tax burden, it's an extremely straightforward "run it through tax software" process, and it still took me two hours.
> It takes an average American taxpayer 11-13 hours to prepare their taxes, according to the IRS.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/9dd76a786ea69...
The giveaway is the Mono<T> return type.
I see the most of it stems from reactive-style programming (reactor.core.publisher.Mono).
Maybe they just tried to fit into one screen? Anyway I'd ask to simplify it, if I was a their team lead.
But no, I don't think this would faze most Java devs. It's ugly and bad practice, but more or less acceptable depending on personal taste. It works, at least.
Point of interest: LLMs tend to go too far in the opposite direction with code like this. They will break everything apart into functions or classes, even trivial one-line lambdas. I find that even more obnoxious than the monstrosity you linked.
My experience with pretty much any Java framework ... It's sad because I do think (especially since Java 8) that Java is a great language for many things. But the community as this insane tendency to create incredibly convoluted pattern-on-top-of-pattern tooling.
The C# query syntax
from x in xs
from y in GetYs(x)
from z in GetZs(y) ...
xs.SelectMany(x => GetYs(x).SelectMany(y => GetZs(y).SelectMany(z => ...)))
So since there is monadic Scala code elsewhere in the project, I wonder if this is a result of someone thinking in Scala and translating it into Java in their head.
Or if you’re in the business of selling extremely wide aspect ratio monitors.
After staring at code for 12 hours a day for a few decades my zoom is 125% by default.
I dislike Java but if it can get me back to the On Error Resume Next days I might reconsider.
Just another shitty Java middleware that never amounted to anything, 200000 lines of code that don't express even a handful of ideas.
0: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/main/docs/des...
Well yes, this is in essence what tax return preparation software has always been; The end result is a completed set of values to fill into the boxes of form 1040 (and whatever additional forms are deemed to be required), which can then be filed electronically or written/printed on paper to be returned at an office or by mail.
It's also fun that, because this is from the US, they can't just use CC0, but instead need to clarify that this must be public domain, separately from the worldwide CC0.
Less snarkily, I do wonder about the discrepancy there.
Creative Commons is a worldwide organization, not a jurisdiction-specfic organization. Creative Commons does not have the authority to harmonize laws worldwide.
PS: AFAIK, however, Authorship rights are different from Copyright, and cannot be given/passed as Copyrights, at least in US.
Also it's important to remember these works are not in the public domain because someone declared them to be, they are simply because they are works carried out by the US government. Similar to how copyright is automatic, it's not applied only when you put the copyright symbol, that's just informational.
>But as I told the team as the end closed in, “We took a pipedream, and made it a policy choice.” No one can claim with a straight face that Direct File is impossible anymore; bringing it back requires only that our elected leaders make a different choice.
>What I mourn the most, though, is the dissolution of the team, the disregard for the vast impact they were poised and eager to deliver. The team itself is what I am proudest of from my time working on Direct File. Their manic dedication to the mission. The care they consistently took to get it right. The trust and love they had for each other.
> 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.
Very curious about what these pieces are that were removed
what do you propose they do, being entirely out of power?
Without this engagement, even if it's just futile noisemaking, the voters will surely think in the next election cycle "why should we vote for you, when you haven't done anything the last 2 years?"
Where is the bullhorn the democrats are supposed to be using that isn't literally owned by a rich guy who benefits from lower taxes when the democrats are not in power?
Twitter is owned by Elon. Facebook by Zuck.
I have seen Dems constantly attacking Trump, if you haven't consider the news you consume may simply be different. There is not one mainstream to push anymore.
as for the "mainstream social media", I'm not sure how effective the instagrams, tiktoks, etc. are at delivering these messages. I know some congressmen on are on there. Perhaps not enough, though. Or perhaps they don't get how to reach their people.
Basically, the democrats want fighters. We're well past bi-partisan tasks where we should just faciliate any kind of bill that comes up. Because very few are reasonable.
Trump called and got Jan 6th.
Democrats called and nobody could be bothered to show up to vote.
In the House, or rather out of the house, they could get their media circus in 10,000% better shape than it is in right now, and consistently deliver a powerful, viral, troll-y, and savvy message about Trump, 8 times a day, across many different media environments.
I do agree that that is the biggest issue in both DNC and RNC though. There's been a clear divide between what DNC wants to run and what the actual democrats want out of the party. Polls suggest from the latter that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is one of the biggest role models of a proper opponent in 2028, but it's been clear the DNC has been fighting against that for almost a decade now, for a variety of reasons.
RNC has a similar issue, once Trump is gone. There's already cracks forming in various different interests of republicans, but they all loosely rally around Trump. If/when Trump kicks the bucket, I don't see who can hold that cult of personality. Vance has very low charisma, and Mike Johnson seems too establishment (for voters that very much voted against establishment). I don't really see a protégé that is carrying whatever that MAGA mindset people want out of the movement.
There's a pretty easy way to reconcile this - run a fair primary election. Rigging it against Sanders in 2016, and not running one at all in 2024, both expectedly led to disaster. You're never gonna win if you don't even have the full support of your own party.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presid...
No clue who they'll run with. Americans have been pretty clear that women are still second-class citizens and should not attempt to reach too high, but hopefully it'll at least be someone a few decades younger.
I'm sure Democrats can complain about their Senators in the same language.
The Direct File system was live more than a year ago, I thought: https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/directfile/
…or did you mean “eventually doomed” rather than “doomed to not ship at all”?
> The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law in August 2022.1 Section 10301(1)(B) of the IRS provided the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with $15 million to establish a task force to design an IRS-run, free direct electronic filing (e-file) system commonly referred to as “Direct File” ...
https://www.tigta.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2025-03/20...
You're bringing up an unrelated law that didn't even exist at the time of the launch of Direct File in early 2024.
IRS Direct File - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131901 - May 2025 (62 comments)
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Language files blank comment code
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Markdown 86 5019 21 9228
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Listing every config language and a few lines of CI or whatever scripts shit is misleading.
I see nothing other than typical boring enterprise/big gov crap here (which is fine, and expected).
It's too bad the current Administration is going to kill DirectFile and has fired all the people who were working on it.
So it's adding an extra $240B in deficit per year (on top of an already ~6-7% of GDP deficit).
"The IRS will no longer accept returns directly."Where are you finding that quote, I don't see it on the Direct File homepage [0]
EDIT: Ah, I see now, it was from paxys's original post [1], I assumed it was meant to be an official quote from the IRS somewhere.
Disbanding 18F was a crime. This made it abundantly clear that the E doesn't stand for efficiency.
Of course, this page doesn't include the $1M inauguration donation, so it's still incomplete.
Yup, and what I see is that Intuit, Inc. gave to exactly one PAC, that donates exclusively to R candidates. Tesla employees also overwhelmingly donated to Kamala Harris[0]; does this mean Tesla and Elon were backing Kamala to win?
> If it hadn’t been Trump, Intuit would be working Joe Kamala.
They didn't donate to him in 2020, so I'm not sure why I should assume this.[1]
[0]https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/tesla-inc/summary?id=D00005...
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20210110001759/https://bideninau...
git add .
git commit --amend -m "initial commit"
git push -f origin HEAD
This probably wouldn't apply to the "initial commit" problem, but I almost always use fixup instead of amend, ex:
git add foo.code
git commit --fixup {commit_with}
git rebase -i --autosquash {main_or_whatever}
This is particularly useful for the review process: All the changes during the review process can be "fixup" commits, allowing reviewers to easily see what did (or didn't) change since their last interaction. At the same time, all the fiddly fixes and back-and-forth stuff won't be in the final history, only a smaller number of "real" commits that future maintainers would care about.
https://github.com/git/git/commit/b4019f045646b1770a80394da8...
The situation is a bit different for business owners though, and most of them hire an accountant for this task. Doing it yourself can be risky as you may be committing tax fraud without realizing it before you get audited, or you may end up overpaying.
To the best of my knowledge, the tax filer is responsible for knowing the law, which includes amendments made almost every Congressional session, the court rulings upon both of those things, the judicial meaning of the English words used in all that corpus, and then one can get into the pdfs and their printing and mailing. Or all of those lawyers and enrolled agents can be rented at tax time in order to outsource some of the liability, and thus that's how we end up with the current cesspool of a system we have
In fact, the tax forms and accompanying instructions are written at a level that anyone with a high school education should be able to understand. Examples are often included, along with call-outs for "Tips" and "Caution" to highlight key points.
Further, there are dozens of publications that go into more detail and cover probably 90% or more of all the scenarios one would encounter. Pub 17 in particular is a beginning-to-end handbook that covers Form 1040 and the common forms/schedules and the entire filing process, with references to other pubs when appropriate, again all written at a high-school level.
These are available in both PDF and HTML formats. Recall that electronic filing has only been around for a few decades, so prior to that everyone used to fill and file on paper The IRS has long history of providing the necessary instructions to do so at a level accessible to the vast majority of users.
It is also a fact that the tax software providers use these same instructions and publications as the specifications that their software must meet. Literally, they will hold up release of various forms for filing using their software until the IRS finalizes the accompanying form instructions.
It is pre-filled with the known incomes so for the best majority of people filling their taxes is a 1 minute exercise.
This also helps, I guess, to have the taxes flow in.
Secondly, there is the issue of State / Local taxes - the IRS only receives federal tax data making it hard to automatically fill out the whole tax return since efiling products tend to file federal / state taxes together.
This year, direct file allowed people to import their W2s and 1099-INTs automatically based on the information the IRS had: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
additionally, the US has (one of?) the most complex tax systems in the world. In part b/c most of it is carve outs...on behalf of various lobbyist groups / catering to specific voting blocks.
The majority of the population of the US claims the standard deduction and has all their income in the form of W2 or 1099 which is reported to the IRS by the employer. Those people can be served by a return free filing system.
The minority which have more complicated taxes can still file like they do today. But even adding on investment income and housing related deductions the IRS likely has enough information to calculate what is owed.
We shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of better. I know you weren’t arguing that point but just because the tax code is complex doesn’t mean it is complex for everyone’s situation
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtyyMPczy6nuj_QR4Jy4J8sf8f3...
Ask anyone in the EU who has lived in one country and earned a paycheck from a different one.
Anyways, give it time, the EU is currently working to make it's tax system more complicated to solve some of the long standing continental issues, and to make the EU system more like the US one.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
If you have a problem with that, build a robust appeal process. Essentially what we have now is an appeal process for every single person.
Presumably, any Intuit competitors will be given a 10 year headstart worth many millions, maybe billions?
also, you need to submit selfies and have a usa sim card from specific providers.
I own stocks, all I had to do was fill in the forms on freetaxusa.com based on the forms the brokerage gave me. Just look for non zero fields on the brokerage forms, and fill out the matching box.
If you mean something more sophisticated tax-wise, then I'm sure direct file wouldn't support it either?
Regarding the sim card, I assume that's about two factor codes? IIRC I always logged in through a code received by email.
I'm doing it all by hand because I'm tired of going through the 'free' apps and entering in all my details, and when I get ready to file it end up being hundreds of dollars to file since the other forms (extra 1040 schedules, 2555, etc) are not included.
If the Biden administration wanted to break the tax software oligopoly, they should have focused on making the government’s own interfaces open.
Here's to hoping they can outcompete TurboTax so brutally that Intuit won't be able to pay for all those lobbyists anymore.
> Releasing Direct File’s source code demonstrates that the IRS is fulfilling its obligations under the SHARE IT Act[1] (three weeks ahead of schedule!).
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9566
And yes, "As a work of the US Government" it is dedicated to the Public Domain by law.
Public Domain means you can legally take their code, riddle it with malware, and distribute, claiming that's the real and true Direct File source code, and you are its author. What you do with malware is a different legal issue of course.
So I'm not sure proving you are commit owner by signing it is really helpful if anyone can do it as well, and there's no copyright holder to decide who's right.
Let's say you see a green checkmark on GitHub that confirms the commit was really made by GitHub user @totally_legit_government_absolutely_not_hacker.
Unless you already have their public GPG key in your private keychain, and you marked it as "trusted" previously, there's not really much more info to that.
UPDATE: besides, the government is like a million people, some of them are malicious actors.
I doubt contributions are welcome
When can we have "code is law"? Write the code as source of truth and generate the law from it.
but the actual tax definitions that deal with facts and derived calculation are here: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/main/direct-f...
See for example the standard deduction and tax rate calculations https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f... https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
I imagine these are based on the MeF (Modernized e-File) schemas because the system needs to transform the input data into XML MeF schemas to submit electronically to the MeF system (See https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/modernized-e-file-mef-s...)
[1] https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f... [2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-14-41.pdf
Journalism is labor
I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.
• The Trump administration is preparing to sign into law a new budget that orders the immediate termination of the Direct File program (see SEC. 112207 "TASK FORCE ON THE TERMINATION OF DIRECT FILE").
• 18F, the agency within the federal government probably most responsible for championing and promoting open source development (and just all-around providing good digital services at a significantly lower cost), was eliminated by the Trump administration in March.
I know that you are probably a busy person, like many of us here; Still, I would encourage you to take some time each week to become informed about what is (or isn't) happening in politics rather than just offering knee-jerk reactions based on partisan feelings. It really is important.
It's not a boogie-man, Trump really does just suck. He's anti like, anything even good-adjacent.
I would love for the Canadian government to release free tax software analogous to DirectFile!
would really render moot the "TurboTax lobbying", "government already has info", etc conversations.
The fact they have an "other" category in the IR10 form that captures the breakdown means I don't have to worry too much about terms that mean nothing to me or my business and 90% of my earnings can just goes in that. No need for an accountant as long as you have good separation of business and personal transactions.
Doing tax is always going to be unpleasant, I don't see any downside to the government making it easier for the person filing the return.
I am all for simplifying the tax code but consumption taxes are the wrong way to go about it.
Some investment-related returns aren't sent to the IRS but I would estimate that for 90% of people, their taxes could be accurately calculated by the information the IRS has on file.
Additionally, I guarantee that these calculations are being made by the government anyway. If you file a tax return that is mathematically incorrect, you are very likely to receive a correction letter from the IRS[2]. This isn't an audit, it's just a letter saying that your taxes were wrong and they redid them for you, with a new outcome.
1. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-types-for-individ... (see "Wage and income transcript")
2. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/understanding-your-cp12-noti...
I know folks outside the U.S. like to riff on us for our complicated taxes and the pay-for filing lobbies, and yes, they have reason to. But, I really think the issue is that we folk in the U.S. are just too scared to try what really is a simpler method.
The system is just really complicated if you have anything weird, and “anything weird” happens a lot.
In other countries, the government does the taxes for you, and sends you a pre-filled form that you can amend or change.
Most people will just have to enter their W2, choose the standard deduction, and then click submit. There are free tools that do this already like FreeTaxUSA.
That said, I have 2 gripes with the current system:
1. companies like TurboTax lobbying to prevent the government from building their own tool... if TurboTax is genuinely better then people will still use it even if the govt builds a tool.
2. the tax code being so complex that it's profitable for wealthy people to avoid taxes with special deductions and hire lawyers to defend them from the overstretched IRS.
Do you have a source for this claim, because I found this:
==Individual income tax return filing is the most time-consuming element of the tax system, with the average taxpayer spending 13 hours to comply with the Form 1040. For individuals with business income, the average amount of time it takes to file taxes is even higher: 24 hours.==
The estimates you shared are based on survey responses so you'd have to take them with a grain of salt. All the other websites are repeating the same survey.
It was through freetaxusa, maybe handwriting balloons the job a bit? But it looks like only 14% file physically.