4 ms·

Is it possible to FOIA the IRS tax-computation code itself?

• breck 6y ago
  I love this idea. Maybe someone has already done that?
• dastx 6y ago
  Feels like this should be in the public domain. Any reason for it not to be?
  • dspillett 6y ago
    The lobbying push from companies that would rather it wasn't (because it could erode their market position by lowering the entry bar for competitors) is stronger than any current push in the other direction, would be my guess.
  • bombcar 6y ago
    Intuit and HR Block lobby against it every year, and the IRS continues to threaten to do it.
    • ISL 6y ago
      It is an unclassified federally-funded document -- as I understand things, it is therefore in the public domain. Because many eyes often make bugs shallow, there is a pretty good chance that a public release of the code will find errors that both find funds that are owed to the government and exonerate people who have been incorrectly billed. What better purpose for the American Fuzzy Lop?
      • leephillips 6y ago
        This can’t possibly be true, in general. Work products produced by a contractor from a federally-funded project are not automatically in the public domain. Government-held, unclassified data can be sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or contain private information about citizens. None of this is public domain.
  • torstenvl 6y ago
    Government works generally are automatically not subject to copyright under 17 U.S.C. § 105, available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 However, that doesn't necessarily mean they're public domain. Trademark law still applies, for example. Additionally, not everything the government uses, even exclusively, was produced or is owned by the government. Often, government contracts allow the contractor to retain control and ownership of the intellectual property. The government may also have copyright transferred to it and retain that copyright. A legal issue I haven't researched is the line between a work that is a government work under work-for-hire principles, and therefore is ineligible for copyright protection, and a work for which the government contracts and for which copyright is subsequently transferred. Before attempting to FOIA the source code of a piece of government-exclusive software, I would first FOIA all government contracts for the creation of that software. Then you'll have something to go on when crafting the FOIA request you really want.
    • breck 6y ago
      proper term is "imaginary property". other than that, like this comment.
  • slater 6y ago
    Just had a look at what the IRS has to say about open-source software: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/use-of-federal-tax-information-fti-in-open-source-software https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/use-of-federal-tax-in... lots of vague stuff, but looking at the Google result, I noticed some differences. Ah, the meta description of the page reads: Open source software, while it can be useful in many instances and appear to be cost effective, may present a security risk because open source developers don’t typically follow security best practices when developing their software. Well, there ya have it! :D
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • JustSomeNobody 6y ago
    They have publications: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/modernized-e-file-mef-user-guides-and-publications https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/modernized-e-file-mef-u...
• Faaak 6y ago
  It'been done for french taxes (even though the online app is government made and free): https://github.com/etalab/taxe-fonciere https://github.com/etalab/taxe-fonciere , https://github.com/etalab/taxe-habitation https://github.com/etalab/taxe-habitation , and more that I don't remember
  • namdnay 6y ago
    It wasn’t FOIAd, etalab is a government department (they’ve done a few cool things, there’s also an interactive map of property transactions with surface and price
• Thrymr 6y ago
  How useful is the computation code though? The computations themselves for the cells on a 1040 form are not that complicated and well documented in the instructions. The hard part is getting all the right numbers into the source boxes.
  • ISL 6y ago
    Somehow, the IRS compares the tax return I submit with what they expected. It is that entire machinery that is in the public interest to be visible and audited by the public.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      You can't FOIA the data they use for your taxes. They have your W2 data, and it was sent to you, but they won't give it to you.
      • ISL 6y ago
        Agreed, but one ought to be able to FOIA the entire pipeline that handles the data. This is especially so given that the results of the pipeline are used for tax enforcement and litigation.
      • tacostakohashi 6y ago
        Really? You can pretty much always FOIA any records about yourself. In the case of W-2 data, seems like you can get it as part of a transcript if you want it: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-types-and-ways-to-order-them https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-types-and-ways-to... Of course, you also get a copy of the same W-2 directly, but it doesn't seem true that "they won't give it to you" if you ask them.
    • nightski 6y ago
      The IRS does have income information, but they do not have deduction information. Deductions are mainly where any form of complexity comes in. Without deductions taxes are super easy.