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Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

by ttn 7y ago

cjoelrun 7y ago
Probably because accountants aren't silly enough to work for free.
robbiemitchell 7y ago
It takes work to keep up with changes to the tax laws in every state and at the federal level. I don’t know many open source accountants.
danso 7y ago
I'm a TurboTax user myself (b/c I almost always procrastinate to the last day/week), but my guess is because tax forms and rules change every year. Maybe the general situation for free filers is easy enough to code for, though? Though one of Turbotax's purported features is that it'll tell you how easy/complex your taxes can or should be, depending on your situation. Also, one of TurboTax's features is e-filing. Maybe there are free e-file alternatives (as in free, with no upsell or strings-attached whatsoever), but it seems you have to be an "authorized IRS e-file provider" to do this, i.e. there's not a developer API: https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options
jrockway 7y ago
Typically open source projects come from two places; a company needs software, or an individual thinks writing it would be fun or at least save them time. Preparing individual tax returns falls into neither category; companies have no interest in individual tax returns (they don't pay that kind of tax), and individuals only have to do it once a year so it's not time-efficient to write a program to do it.
throwaway_law 7y ago
There are...you can download any tax form for free and fill it in by hand or in a PDF program. You will see articles regularly attacking TurboTax because SV has been wildly unsuccessful in producing a startup that can compete with TurboTax, so instead a lot of effort is spent attacking them in the media. Google, Microsoft, Facebook all spend significantly more on lobbying to ensure market hegemony. Don't be surprised at the pattern, attack TurboTax in the media, then up pops a new startup that will disrupt the industry. Rinse and repeat.
- journalctl 7y ago
  Nice editorializing. TurboTax is actually maligned (as plainly stated in TFA) because of their lobbying efforts to keep tax filing difficult.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  I can just imagine the YouTube advertising campaign... > Do you hate doing you taxes? Try Simple, we made it easy! Just put in a few personal details and we'll take care of all the rest. We'll download your W2 information from your employer and send it to the IRS. With our Simple Guarantee, you can feel confident that your return will be correct. Or maybe we could call it Tophat. That's a good tax software name.
- dangus 7y ago
  I disagree with this simply because the idea that competition exists or could exist is not an excuse for the system to function the way it does. There are new players in the space, like CreditKarma. Many competitors offer more features for free than Intuit as well. But that doesn’t mean we should have to rely on private companies (who are data hoarding) to file our taxes. That doesn’t mean that free fillable forms need to be unnecessarily more difficult to use than commercial solutions. In reality, the IRS already has all the relevant forms reported to them. For most people the IRS could send a tax form already filed out to read, verify, and return. For business owners and other more complex situations, these are still the same people who are already hiring a tax accountant and are probably skipping TurboTax as it is. In other words, commercial tax preparation software for most users is filling an artificial need that only exists because the government has been lobbied not to provide the (basic) service itself.
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    > That doesn’t mean that free fillable forms need to be unnecessarily more difficult to use than commercial solutions. They aren't. The IRS form is the exact for completed by TurboTax or any other accountant/service provider. The IRS only accepts their own forms. >For most people the IRS could send a tax form already filed out to read, verify, and return. Thats what is really being asked...the Government to do tax returns for you for free. Even if TurboTax and accountants weren't lobbying the Government not to do taxpayers tax returns for them for free, its a major jump to say the government/IRS would unilaterally begin doing this for taxpayers as a free service.
lincolnq 7y ago
Anyone want to start one? The project is not easy. It requires carefully reading tax codes and implementing them, handling presumably thousands of explicit legal requirements plus whatever edge cases exist that may or may not be explicit in the law. Not to mention keeping up with annual changes. If you screw it up, whether or not you are legally liable, people are probably coming after you anyway. And the support nightmare... That said, I think a programming-languages approach might be a good one to try to execute on this. Keeping the source code as close to the tax code as possible seems the only way to stay sane with respect to long-term maintenance.
paxys 7y ago
It isn't the software that is complicated, it's the intricate knowledge of the tax laws at the Federal and state level that goes behind building it. If you can find a team of lawyers and tax accountants willing to work on it for free (and update it every year) then building something like TurboTax wouldn't be too difficult.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Open source software can be paid for. With a bit of funding, I bet an OSS-clone of TT could be produced and the organization can host and offer e-filing for a nominal fee. I think the IRS will actually pay a service fee to small companies that file the free federal returns for individuals.
washadjeffmad 7y ago
The exact conditions that would enable a simple FOSS tax software or portal is what TurboTax has been lobbying to make sure stays broken and can't easily exist. Also, taxes in the US are really complicated, and while our governments know how much we owe, the burden of determination and filing is placed wholly on the citizen. Should we be able to log in to our IRS profile page and track and manage our taxes ourselves throughout the year? Yes. Is this techically possible today? Also yes. Would this make TurboTax and some other bloodsucking middlemen less TurboRich? Well, you can see why it's impossible.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gok 7y ago
There are dozens of alternatives. However, tax prep software needs to be certified for correctness, and that's expensive and onerous. This is made harder due to the many many different tax jurisdictions in the US.
Accujack 7y ago
There are "tax help" open source programs out there, but online filing (which is the main goal here) is impossible without a corporation working with the IRS to set up access, negotiate protocols, and such. There's no open standard/API/infrastructure or protocol for online filing, so the only option for an open source program to help with that is "print out the whole thing and send it in" which is usually a lot more trouble (more expensive in time and money) than just paying Turbotax or similar services. Turbotax and the rest of the tax prep industry have lobbied for years to prevent easy/free options for citizens to file taxes... it isn't just them preventing other companies from building products to do it, they're suppressing all competition and modernization, basically anything that would threaten the money they get from charging people to prep taxes. At this point the entire system is set up with high barriers to entry, and open source solutions/free software don't typically work well in that kind of setting. Essentially, no open source program has any chance of facilitating online filing in the US because of corruption in the US government.
- nojvek 7y ago
  Or incompetency. I think our leaders spend way too much figuring out how to block the other party from moving forward than solving hard problems. China’s a bully but my god, it gets shit done at an insane pace. That being said, how do people file Taxes in China?
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > There's no open standard/API/infrastructure or protocol for online filing, so the only option for an open source program to help with that is "print out the whole thing and send it in" which is usually a lot more trouble (more expensive in time and money) than just paying Turbotax or similar services. That is the least burdensome part of the process, to me. In fact I used to do that from H&R Block Tax Cut back when there was an additional charge for e-file.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
The biggest problem is tax laws change annually. You can't write the open source software once and be done with it. It needs to be updated every year.
ac29 7y ago
From a previous HN discussion on US taxes: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ I haven't used it, so cant comment on how well it works.
pwg 7y ago
> Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax Actually there is one (depending on your definition of 'alternate'): http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ I have used it for the last two years to do my Fed and State taxes.

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

by ttn 7y ago

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

cjoelrun 7y ago

Probably because accountants aren't silly enough to work for free.

robbiemitchell 7y ago

It takes work to keep up with changes to the tax laws in every state and at the federal level. I don’t know many open source accountants.

danso 7y ago

I'm a TurboTax user myself (b/c I almost always procrastinate to the last day/week), but my guess is because tax forms and rules change every year. Maybe the general situation for free filers is easy enough to code for, though? Though one of Turbotax's purported features is that it'll tell you how easy/complex your taxes can or should be, depending on your situation. Also, one of TurboTax's features is e-filing. Maybe there are free e-file alternatives (as in free, with no upsell or strings-attached whatsoever), but it seems you have to be an "authorized IRS e-file provider" to do this, i.e. there's not a developer API: https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options

jrockway 7y ago

Typically open source projects come from two places; a company needs software, or an individual thinks writing it would be fun or at least save them time. Preparing individual tax returns falls into neither category; companies have no interest in individual tax returns (they don't pay that kind of tax), and individuals only have to do it once a year so it's not time-efficient to write a program to do it.

throwaway_law 7y ago

There are...you can download any tax form for free and fill it in by hand or in a PDF program. You will see articles regularly attacking TurboTax because SV has been wildly unsuccessful in producing a startup that can compete with TurboTax, so instead a lot of effort is spent attacking them in the media. Google, Microsoft, Facebook all spend significantly more on lobbying to ensure market hegemony. Don't be surprised at the pattern, attack TurboTax in the media, then up pops a new startup that will disrupt the industry. Rinse and repeat.

journalctl 7y ago
Nice editorializing. TurboTax is actually maligned (as plainly stated in TFA) because of their lobbying efforts to keep tax filing difficult.
mywittyname 7y ago
I can just imagine the YouTube advertising campaign... > Do you hate doing you taxes? Try Simple, we made it easy! Just put in a few personal details and we'll take care of all the rest. We'll download your W2 information from your employer and send it to the IRS. With our Simple Guarantee, you can feel confident that your return will be correct. Or maybe we could call it Tophat. That's a good tax software name.
dangus 7y ago
I disagree with this simply because the idea that competition exists or could exist is not an excuse for the system to function the way it does. There are new players in the space, like CreditKarma. Many competitors offer more features for free than Intuit as well. But that doesn’t mean we should have to rely on private companies (who are data hoarding) to file our taxes. That doesn’t mean that free fillable forms need to be unnecessarily more difficult to use than commercial solutions. In reality, the IRS already has all the relevant forms reported to them. For most people the IRS could send a tax form already filed out to read, verify, and return. For business owners and other more complex situations, these are still the same people who are already hiring a tax accountant and are probably skipping TurboTax as it is. In other words, commercial tax preparation software for most users is filling an artificial need that only exists because the government has been lobbied not to provide the (basic) service itself.
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  > That doesn’t mean that free fillable forms need to be unnecessarily more difficult to use than commercial solutions. They aren't. The IRS form is the exact for completed by TurboTax or any other accountant/service provider. The IRS only accepts their own forms. >For most people the IRS could send a tax form already filed out to read, verify, and return. Thats what is really being asked...the Government to do tax returns for you for free. Even if TurboTax and accountants weren't lobbying the Government not to do taxpayers tax returns for them for free, its a major jump to say the government/IRS would unilaterally begin doing this for taxpayers as a free service.

lincolnq 7y ago

Anyone want to start one? The project is not easy. It requires carefully reading tax codes and implementing them, handling presumably thousands of explicit legal requirements plus whatever edge cases exist that may or may not be explicit in the law. Not to mention keeping up with annual changes. If you screw it up, whether or not you are legally liable, people are probably coming after you anyway. And the support nightmare... That said, I think a programming-languages approach might be a good one to try to execute on this. Keeping the source code as close to the tax code as possible seems the only way to stay sane with respect to long-term maintenance.

paxys 7y ago

It isn't the software that is complicated, it's the intricate knowledge of the tax laws at the Federal and state level that goes behind building it. If you can find a team of lawyers and tax accountants willing to work on it for free (and update it every year) then building something like TurboTax wouldn't be too difficult.

mywittyname 7y ago
Open source software can be paid for. With a bit of funding, I bet an OSS-clone of TT could be produced and the organization can host and offer e-filing for a nominal fee. I think the IRS will actually pay a service fee to small companies that file the free federal returns for individuals.

washadjeffmad 7y ago

The exact conditions that would enable a simple FOSS tax software or portal is what TurboTax has been lobbying to make sure stays broken and can't easily exist. Also, taxes in the US are really complicated, and while our governments know how much we owe, the burden of determination and filing is placed wholly on the citizen. Should we be able to log in to our IRS profile page and track and manage our taxes ourselves throughout the year? Yes. Is this techically possible today? Also yes. Would this make TurboTax and some other bloodsucking middlemen less TurboRich? Well, you can see why it's impossible.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gok 7y ago

There are dozens of alternatives. However, tax prep software needs to be certified for correctness, and that's expensive and onerous. This is made harder due to the many many different tax jurisdictions in the US.

Accujack 7y ago

There are "tax help" open source programs out there, but online filing (which is the main goal here) is impossible without a corporation working with the IRS to set up access, negotiate protocols, and such. There's no open standard/API/infrastructure or protocol for online filing, so the only option for an open source program to help with that is "print out the whole thing and send it in" which is usually a lot more trouble (more expensive in time and money) than just paying Turbotax or similar services. Turbotax and the rest of the tax prep industry have lobbied for years to prevent easy/free options for citizens to file taxes... it isn't just them preventing other companies from building products to do it, they're suppressing all competition and modernization, basically anything that would threaten the money they get from charging people to prep taxes. At this point the entire system is set up with high barriers to entry, and open source solutions/free software don't typically work well in that kind of setting. Essentially, no open source program has any chance of facilitating online filing in the US because of corruption in the US government.

nojvek 7y ago
Or incompetency. I think our leaders spend way too much figuring out how to block the other party from moving forward than solving hard problems. China’s a bully but my god, it gets shit done at an insane pace. That being said, how do people file Taxes in China?
vonmoltke 7y ago
> There's no open standard/API/infrastructure or protocol for online filing, so the only option for an open source program to help with that is "print out the whole thing and send it in" which is usually a lot more trouble (more expensive in time and money) than just paying Turbotax or similar services. That is the least burdensome part of the process, to me. In fact I used to do that from H&R Block Tax Cut back when there was an additional charge for e-file.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

The biggest problem is tax laws change annually. You can't write the open source software once and be done with it. It needs to be updated every year.

ac29 7y ago

From a previous HN discussion on US taxes: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ I haven't used it, so cant comment on how well it works.

pwg 7y ago

> Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax Actually there is one (depending on your definition of 'alternate'): http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ I have used it for the last two years to do my Fed and State taxes.