23 ms·

Open Source Tax Software

543 points by aidangrimshaw 5y ago

thex10 5y ago
This work excites me a lot, but I can’t help but wonder if this should be a government-funded rather than volunteer-driven effort.
- carbocation 5y ago
  Government funded efforts can be disrupted by the tax software lobby.
- donw 5y ago
  Should be, yes. Will be, no. Tax preparation is a multi-billion dollar industry.
- schiho 5y ago
  It can start as an open source project and can end up goverment-funded.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  The IRS has to program all the rules into their system anyway. If they could simply standardize those rules into a git controlled Yaml file or something better suited, keeping software updated could be made rather easy for open source projects.
  - _hl_ 5y ago
    The French tax office for example has created a programming language in which the legally binding tax code is defined.
slownews45 5y ago
Google link if helpful. https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home
peter303 5y ago
The IRS option Free File Fillable Forms has online forms that compute internal arithmetic and self-efile. This eliminates many hand math errors. However this system isnt good at telling you which forms you need to file. You could miss an important one. For example sometimes you need a Schedule D and sometimes you dont. If you income reaches six figures you have to calculate the AMT and NIT forms to see whether they apply or not.
phuff 5y ago
The US government provides this online for free. Only the edgiest of edge cases aren't supported. You can e-file your federal return with this regardless of how much money you make. You still have to do the calculations yourself. But you don't have to use paper. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
- sova 5y ago
  It's 2021 and you see no problem with this?
- the_svd_doctor 5y ago
  Right. But doing the calculation is pretty hard for most people. Add that to the risk associated to making mistakes and most people will probably prefer paying a bit and have a “””guarantee””” that there are no mistakes. (I don’t disagree he. Just pointing it out.)
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Yes, and it's not just calculations. It's things like, "if section F line 27 is greater than the total in section B line 12, subtract the amount in section z line 127 from this total and multiply the result by the appropriate tax rate (see long form instructions for form 478B and fill out Worksheet 12C to calculate your appropriate tax rate). This is not a verbatim quote, but solar to what you have to do now to calculate health care insurance subsidies.
    - joshuaheard 5y ago
      I build a spread sheet for all the forms and worksheets that require calculations. FreeFillableForms does some of the calculations for you, and does not have any worksheets. Excel has formulas for everything I have encountered paying taxes, and I have a joint account with stock options and several rental property LLCs. As a bonus, the spreadsheets are generally reusable, after checking to make sure there are no changes.
rlv-dan 5y ago
Title should be American Open Source Tax Software.
Kyragem 5y ago
Unhappy with turbotax I have been using freetaxusa for many years which is also free.
paxys 5y ago
The site seems down but I really want to see how someone was able to fit the entirety of the US tax code into an Excel workbook.
- Mathnerd314 5y ago
  The excel1040 site is/was just a redirect to https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home
CheezeIt 5y ago
No way would I ever trust open source tax software not to mess things up somehow. The paid software has a big incentive to get it right.
- bsdnoob 5y ago
  Do you not trust any opensource software and prefer only paid software to build your systems?
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    Guess who is going to get pulled into court when someone's taxes get screwed up and the IRS comes after them?
    - Mathnerd314 5y ago
      > the IRS doesn't consider accidental mistakes as fraud. A case for intention has to be made before the IRS actually charges you with a crime. It's relatively easy to screw up your taxes by misentering a number into the paid software as well. The various guarantees the paid software people offer don't cover this sort of situation. I don't think this is really a factor.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Do you think if that happened while using Intuit software, they are going to pull intuit into court? When you prepare your taxes using software, it all looks the same once the IRS receives it. It will show up as self prepared. If you pay a CPA to do it, then they also sign the return. But in either case, you will be responsible for underpaying your taxes and will have to make up the difference. I doubt any of the software companies offer any kind of guarantee.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        The big tax companies do offer some guarantees of the accuracy of their calculations. Which is probably not the kind of mistake you’ll have on your taxes anyway. Basic arithmetic is easy. And if you do make these mistakes it’s not likely the IRS does anything more than correcting it. But it’s more than no guarantee. Also they do provide human support.
3gg 5y ago
The real problem here is that Intuit and other companies lobby millions to maintain their status quo. The right thing to do would be to put every single dollar spent on these corporations into a government program that develops this kind of software or even does the taxes for you (this already exists in many countries in the EU.) Instead, in the US, you pay for Turbotax, they make a profit out if it, and then they use part of the money to lobby and keep the tax code and system rigged for their own benefit. I don't know if open source software is the solution here -- and as far as I know, the tax forms change every year, so it will be forever playing catch-up -- but it seems to be missing the point entirely.
- icelancer 5y ago
  >> even does the taxes for you This should exist. 80% of US citizens can just have this done right now. >> government program that develops this kind of software This should not for the remaining 20%.
  - 3gg 5y ago
    Right. For most people that are on a payroll and maybe have a 401k and what not, tax preparation should be easily automated. In some EU countries, the government will send you a draft that you basically just have to sign and send back. For the remaining 20% (likely even less than 10%) of people with more exotic investments, it is probably safe to assume that they either have the knowledge to handle the edge cases themselves or the wealth to pay someone to do it for them. It should also be noted that the IRS already has all of the information about you anyway. Your bank, your brokers, etc all send copies of your financials to them. At that point, filling in a tax return by hand is basically a potential form of punishment for not doing your homework right.
    - desas 5y ago
      In the UK 80% of the population don't even have to sign anything and send it back. The rest have some employment income information on a website and have to supply the rest of the data, I found it pretty straight forward when I did it for the first time.
mbil 5y ago
Here's the GitHub repo of one of the projects mentioned in the article: https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes
xivzgrev 5y ago
I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts. Noble, yes. Short lived, yes. It’s relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem comes from all. The. Edge. Cases. 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple states? 3) what if i… And on and on. And it’s not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of updates and verifications every year. It takes an army to build and maintain. Generally not the kind of thing for open source (unless they’re paid). But then what’s the point? One may say it’s more transparent, but TurboTax etc are transparent with their formulas - you can check every box they fill in for you. I think the only thing that can really disrupt this dynamic are “free” commercial software (like credit karma now cash app), or government provided.
- nn3 5y ago
  Excel1040 has been around for quite some time, long enough to already have long crossed the "short lived" threshold. It avoids the state problem by not supporting states at all. It's done by a single retired person. I always donate a few bucks and I suspect he's making enough off the donations for it to be worthwhile for him. But yes eventually it might be abandoned if he doesn't find some successor, but so far it's very alive.
- silisili 5y ago
  Funny you mention that, the first time I tried to use Credit Karma Tax, either last year or the year before, they punted on me for having lived in two states. I agree with your sentiment, but not resolution. The truest resolution is in simplifying the tax code, which Intuit and co do not want. Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top notch, and cheap. Highly recommend.
  - aorth 5y ago
    > Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top notch, and cheap. Highly recommend. Ah! I remember FreeTaxUsa. They have this silly verification thing in their signup. Your email address must be on an "American" domain. Mine is self hosted on some other domain and they literally say it's "foreign". Just checked again and it's still there. Hah... sigh.
lhuser123 5y ago
I use https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ to submit my 1040 every year. It’s recommended by the IRS if you know what you are doing.
avodonosov 5y ago
Until policy makers puplish the tax rules in an executable algorithmic form, I am afraid open projects like this will have difficulty to keep up with the regulation changes.
alkonaut 5y ago
The effort should be focused on forcing states to standardize their tax code and states/IRS to provide a simple filing service. If the answer to what’s blocking it is “some corporations wouldn’t like it” then it can’t be that big a problem
davidjytang 5y ago
Taiwan govt prepopulates tax forms for you. Just go to their website via smartphone or computer, you just click next next next and fill in credit card info if you need to pay more tax or bank account number for tax return. It takes me like 5 minutes to file tax every year.
la_fayette 5y ago
Is there something like this for Germany?
- sdfjkl 5y ago
  There's Elster.de
- 2ion 5y ago
  elster.de is the official means to input your tax info supported by the tax office. However, it's largely an online form with some legalese and dry formal explanations in a sidebar. You can largely use it if you know what you are doing or have the most simplest tax case, but it won't offer you suggestions how to optimize taxes, and doesn't include large lists of items that you could possibly deduct. This service is offered by proprietary tax tools like WISO or QuickSteuer which offer questionnaires trying to cover more details of your tax situation to find out opportunities to optimize, and include large help files that contain examples and explanations. Cost for these proprietary tools can be very low, they go on sale for like €5-€10 at discounters during tax season or are like €20 for the fully featured versions. These tools also manage items like long-term deductions over the years, so that's their lock in effect.
ivolimmen 5y ago
I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff. I am Dutch and my government makes it (relatively) easy to do taxes. We got a website we can go to; it's filled by the government and we just need to verify that it is filled correctly and then click submit. Some people can make adjustments where needed and if needed. You can also let an accountant do it for you but that is optional; but useful if you have had a turbulent year that makes takes more difficult (like selling and buying a new house). When they did not use a website (a few years back) they offered a downloadable application that was available under Windows, MacOS and Linux (GTK). It worked fine.
- asciimov 5y ago
  > I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff. Our brand of conservatism is informed by Calvinism and hard core Capitalism. Those in charge believe in using religion to control and the purpose of everything is to make someone money.
- dado3212 5y ago
  Yeah, this kind of thing has been suggested a lot, and then TurboTax lobbies to kill it. See https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... and more.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Same here in France, there's a website with a multi-stage form, with fields for various things ( revenues, deductions, etc.). Everything they know (revenues from employment, self-employment, investments via French entities, etc.) is pre-filled, you just have to check it, and if something is missing you add it. For 90% of people it's a matter of next-next-check this value with my payslip-next-next.
  - amelius 5y ago
    At what point will taxes be collected at the EU level?
the_pwner224 5y ago
You don't need software to file taxes. You can download the forms (1040, etc.) from the IRS website (and your state IRS's website), fill them in, print them out, and mail them to the IRS. It costs a few (literally a few) dollars for the postage and a certificate of mailing from the USPS as proof that you had the forms sent out by the deadline. The forms are not super straightforward but not incredibly complex either. For most normal people with a W-2 or 1099/self-employed income, retirement savings accounts, and some brokerage/investment accounts, you should be able to get it done in a weekend of research & work using resources on the internet, referencing the IRS's instructions for their forms, and using your previous year's return as a reference. And less time in future years once you've figured out how it works. You will need Adobe PDF software, but it's libre and a Windows virtual machine with the network connection disabled will solve that if you use Linux on your computer. It's not for everyone, but if you don't want to support the evil tax industry in the US (there have been a number of posts on HN about this) then it's a good option. Additionally, you can create an account on Turbotax and fill in all your information (but with fake name, SSN, employer tax numbers, etc.) and it'll tell you the amount of remaining tax obligation / tax return that it calculates. So you can use that to verify that you did everything properly. Turbotax only charges money to actually submit the return through them; even if you would normally require a paid TurboTax plan (e.g. for contractors, living in multiple states, etc.) you can still go through the process and get the final number without paying. I did this for the first time this spring and was able to get it done in a weekend. I had W-2 and 1099 income/deductions and lived in multiple states last year. From what I can recall, basically the form 1040 is the 'root of the tree'; your W-2 income goes into that and every other taxable/deductible thing you do ends up aggregated into the 1040. The schedules (A,B,C,...) of the 1040 are like the first level child nodes; each one has a different topic(s) like self employment gains/losses, farming/fishing income, etc. so you can skim over them and see what applies to you, then fill out the ones you need to and enter their totals back into the 1040. The schedules will have lines into which you aggregate specific incomes/deductions, and the instructions for the schedules will have details on how to calculate all of that. And for other special deductions there are lines in the 1040/schedules that mention them. I'm not a CPA so don't blame me if you follow those instructions and something goes wrong.
- kamray23 5y ago
bjarneh 5y ago
Filing personal taxes in the US sounds like filing taxes for a company in other countries. A complete nightmare consisting of tons of forms that some bureaucrat dreamed up, which nobody really knows how to fill out correctly. Software exists to fill them out for you, and if you use some well-known software to do it, it's just assumed to be correct by everyone; including the state.
- qzw 5y ago
  This perception is what keeps a lot of tax preparation companies in business. I know people who could fill out their taxes in 10 minutes, who would instead pay hundreds of dollars every year to have it done by one of those “tax stores.” If US high schools would spend one day to walk kids through filling out a tax return, they’d probably put H&R Block out of business. Which is also why it’s won’t ever happen.
  - Moto7451 5y ago
    Both you and the parent are right. I actually did get basic filing instructions in high school and managed to handle my own taxes easily for the first fourteen of my working years. Eventually my taxes fell into the realm of forms that even CPAs can make mistakes on or are unfamiliar with. I am really conservative with this stuff and really make sure to pay what I owe. I, or my CPA, still make mistakes that result in the State or Federal government sending me small “you paid us too much” checks every so often. That’s been true when I’ve done it myself, used TurboTax, or used CPAs. I have a friend with similarly complicated taxes and she just got her first “you owe us $XX” letter for this TY2020 and another $XX check in her favor for TY2018 and TY2019 making the whole thing a wash. If they can tell you that you paid the wrong amount a couple months after filing it feels like for those on a W2 and without unreported 1099 income they could just send a statement with an invoice if you owe and a check if you’re owed. The status quo for those individuals really is as you say. There’s enough complexity baked in that people throw their hands up in the air and just pay the $100 for basic tax prep that should be unnecessary in the first place and is not much more difficult than balancing a checking book.
    - 5y ago
Havoc 5y ago
Sounds like a minefield. How do you know which formulas have been updated for the latest law changes? Hire a tax guy?
zoobab 5y ago
Every country has its own tax laws, impossible to implement and to use. Plus politicians keep changing the tax laws all the time.
leosarev 5y ago
Meanwhile, at site of russian federal tax service: - https://imgur.com/a/NUZZlJM https://imgur.com/a/NUZZlJM (file for tax returns) - https://imgur.com/a/gUGf9wU https://imgur.com/a/gUGf9wU (all income, automatically known by tax authority by electronic data exchange with my employer and broker) - https://imgur.com/a/Nvh5RI8 https://imgur.com/a/Nvh5RI8 (all my estates taxes, automatically calculated and sent as invoice to my bank)
noodlesUK 5y ago
One of the most brutal parts of the US tax system is the informational returns you have to do if you have any international connections at all. If you’re unfortunate enough to live abroad and be self employed or own a small business, you basically get fucked. Lookup IRS form 5471. The US assumes that all people who have anything to do with other countries are billionaire owners of multinationals with armies of lawyers to fill out paperwork.
INTPenis 5y ago
What do people think of GNU Cash? I tried it once when I started up my own company and wanted to keep books. Noticed it was very much adapted for non-US audiences. Even after adding Swedish account codes it was still missing a lot of info. It was essentially a glorified spreadsheed. Could have stuck with Libreoffice calc as far as features went.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Tried it for a small non-profit and shared your finding that a well-made spreadsheet is just as good if not better. But a larger company would've quickly hit a regulatory wall as well, not just a technical one. For accounting software to be legal under our tax laws it needs to prevent you from doing things that are illegal (back-dating, editing, deleting...) and it needs to have a technical study done to prove that. Such a study is of course expensive and must be commissioned by the vendor. You can imagine how that just isn't possible for GNU Cash and similar community-built programs.
oauea 5y ago
Just move to another country that hasn't made deals with tax companies. Believe it or not, the government is perfectly capable of doing your taxes for you. There is no reason to waste your time on this every year other than corporate greed.
wyclif 5y ago
excel1040.com appears to be down.
nikkinana 5y ago
Clickbait bullshit blog post. Do some actual code asshole.
DudeInBasement 5y ago
What will happen first, Open source Tax software, Or Open source voting software
hankdoupe 5y ago
If you're interested in using open-source tax software for analyzing policy changes, here are a few really cool projects written in Python: - https://taxcalc.pslmodels.org/ https://taxcalc.pslmodels.org/ - webapp here: compute.studio/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain/new/ - https://github.com/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk https://github.com/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk - webapp here: https://uk.policyengine.org/ (disclosure: I'm one of the maintainers of Tax-Calculator and Compute Studio)
city41 5y ago
> Your options are to do it by hand, pay someone like Intuit, or if you are below a certain income threshold get some tax software for free You can also hire an accountant. Our accountant does our taxes for just a tad more than what TurboTax's self employed tier costs. Even if we could get away with TurboTax's deluxe tier, I'd still argue the slight added cost of the accountant is well worth it.
tldrthelaw 5y ago
Tax attorney here, these are great resources and should be encouraged. A lot of folks (looking at you, Intuit) spend a lot of money to make a lot more keeping a lock on the market. These kinds of initiatives don't get everyone all the way there (see: other comments about edge cases) but they can go a long way towards educating folks about what filing looks like -- and at least some of them will give it a go themselves. tldr: good post
joshuaheard 5y ago
All of the IRS forms are in pdf format. The form fields are programmable in Adobe Acrobat. One could code in all the necessary computations into the form fields and combine all the forms into a booklet.
trezemanero 5y ago
>Filing taxes in America sucks Come to Brazil and the Receita Federal will suck you dry
peter303 5y ago
The IRS wanted to automate your tax filing by filling out the basic tax forms from your W2s, 1099s and family size. (Other countries do this) However a strong tax accounting lobby canned it. They substituted with free federal filing for those below median income.

543 points by aidangrimshaw 5y ago

This work excites me a lot, but I can’t help but wonder if this should be a government-funded rather than volunteer-driven effort.

carbocation 5y ago
Government funded efforts can be disrupted by the tax software lobby.
donw 5y ago
Should be, yes. Will be, no. Tax preparation is a multi-billion dollar industry.
schiho 5y ago
It can start as an open source project and can end up goverment-funded.
jjeaff 5y ago
The IRS has to program all the rules into their system anyway. If they could simply standardize those rules into a git controlled Yaml file or something better suited, keeping software updated could be made rather easy for open source projects.
- _hl_ 5y ago
  The French tax office for example has created a programming language in which the legally binding tax code is defined.

slownews45 5y ago

Google link if helpful. https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home

peter303 5y ago

The IRS option Free File Fillable Forms has online forms that compute internal arithmetic and self-efile. This eliminates many hand math errors. However this system isnt good at telling you which forms you need to file. You could miss an important one. For example sometimes you need a Schedule D and sometimes you dont. If you income reaches six figures you have to calculate the AMT and NIT forms to see whether they apply or not.

phuff 5y ago

The US government provides this online for free. Only the edgiest of edge cases aren't supported. You can e-file your federal return with this regardless of how much money you make. You still have to do the calculations yourself. But you don't have to use paper. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

sova 5y ago
It's 2021 and you see no problem with this?
the_svd_doctor 5y ago
Right. But doing the calculation is pretty hard for most people. Add that to the risk associated to making mistakes and most people will probably prefer paying a bit and have a “””guarantee””” that there are no mistakes. (I don’t disagree he. Just pointing it out.)
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Yes, and it's not just calculations. It's things like, "if section F line 27 is greater than the total in section B line 12, subtract the amount in section z line 127 from this total and multiply the result by the appropriate tax rate (see long form instructions for form 478B and fill out Worksheet 12C to calculate your appropriate tax rate). This is not a verbatim quote, but solar to what you have to do now to calculate health care insurance subsidies.
  - joshuaheard 5y ago
    I build a spread sheet for all the forms and worksheets that require calculations. FreeFillableForms does some of the calculations for you, and does not have any worksheets. Excel has formulas for everything I have encountered paying taxes, and I have a joint account with stock options and several rental property LLCs. As a bonus, the spreadsheets are generally reusable, after checking to make sure there are no changes.

rlv-dan 5y ago

Title should be American Open Source Tax Software.

Kyragem 5y ago

Unhappy with turbotax I have been using freetaxusa for many years which is also free.

paxys 5y ago

The site seems down but I really want to see how someone was able to fit the entirety of the US tax code into an Excel workbook.

Mathnerd314 5y ago
The excel1040 site is/was just a redirect to https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home

CheezeIt 5y ago

No way would I ever trust open source tax software not to mess things up somehow. The paid software has a big incentive to get it right.

bsdnoob 5y ago
Do you not trust any opensource software and prefer only paid software to build your systems?
- orangepurple 5y ago
  Guess who is going to get pulled into court when someone's taxes get screwed up and the IRS comes after them?
  - Mathnerd314 5y ago
    > the IRS doesn't consider accidental mistakes as fraud. A case for intention has to be made before the IRS actually charges you with a crime. It's relatively easy to screw up your taxes by misentering a number into the paid software as well. The various guarantees the paid software people offer don't cover this sort of situation. I don't think this is really a factor.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Do you think if that happened while using Intuit software, they are going to pull intuit into court? When you prepare your taxes using software, it all looks the same once the IRS receives it. It will show up as self prepared. If you pay a CPA to do it, then they also sign the return. But in either case, you will be responsible for underpaying your taxes and will have to make up the difference. I doubt any of the software companies offer any kind of guarantee.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      The big tax companies do offer some guarantees of the accuracy of their calculations. Which is probably not the kind of mistake you’ll have on your taxes anyway. Basic arithmetic is easy. And if you do make these mistakes it’s not likely the IRS does anything more than correcting it. But it’s more than no guarantee. Also they do provide human support.

3gg 5y ago

The real problem here is that Intuit and other companies lobby millions to maintain their status quo. The right thing to do would be to put every single dollar spent on these corporations into a government program that develops this kind of software or even does the taxes for you (this already exists in many countries in the EU.) Instead, in the US, you pay for Turbotax, they make a profit out if it, and then they use part of the money to lobby and keep the tax code and system rigged for their own benefit. I don't know if open source software is the solution here -- and as far as I know, the tax forms change every year, so it will be forever playing catch-up -- but it seems to be missing the point entirely.

icelancer 5y ago
>> even does the taxes for you This should exist. 80% of US citizens can just have this done right now. >> government program that develops this kind of software This should not for the remaining 20%.
- 3gg 5y ago
  Right. For most people that are on a payroll and maybe have a 401k and what not, tax preparation should be easily automated. In some EU countries, the government will send you a draft that you basically just have to sign and send back. For the remaining 20% (likely even less than 10%) of people with more exotic investments, it is probably safe to assume that they either have the knowledge to handle the edge cases themselves or the wealth to pay someone to do it for them. It should also be noted that the IRS already has all of the information about you anyway. Your bank, your brokers, etc all send copies of your financials to them. At that point, filling in a tax return by hand is basically a potential form of punishment for not doing your homework right.
  - desas 5y ago
    In the UK 80% of the population don't even have to sign anything and send it back. The rest have some employment income information on a website and have to supply the rest of the data, I found it pretty straight forward when I did it for the first time.

mbil 5y ago

Here's the GitHub repo of one of the projects mentioned in the article: https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes

xivzgrev 5y ago

I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts. Noble, yes. Short lived, yes. It’s relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem comes from all. The. Edge. Cases. 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple states? 3) what if i… And on and on. And it’s not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of updates and verifications every year. It takes an army to build and maintain. Generally not the kind of thing for open source (unless they’re paid). But then what’s the point? One may say it’s more transparent, but TurboTax etc are transparent with their formulas - you can check every box they fill in for you. I think the only thing that can really disrupt this dynamic are “free” commercial software (like credit karma now cash app), or government provided.

nn3 5y ago
Excel1040 has been around for quite some time, long enough to already have long crossed the "short lived" threshold. It avoids the state problem by not supporting states at all. It's done by a single retired person. I always donate a few bucks and I suspect he's making enough off the donations for it to be worthwhile for him. But yes eventually it might be abandoned if he doesn't find some successor, but so far it's very alive.
silisili 5y ago
Funny you mention that, the first time I tried to use Credit Karma Tax, either last year or the year before, they punted on me for having lived in two states. I agree with your sentiment, but not resolution. The truest resolution is in simplifying the tax code, which Intuit and co do not want. Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top notch, and cheap. Highly recommend.
- aorth 5y ago
  > Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top notch, and cheap. Highly recommend. Ah! I remember FreeTaxUsa. They have this silly verification thing in their signup. Your email address must be on an "American" domain. Mine is self hosted on some other domain and they literally say it's "foreign". Just checked again and it's still there. Hah... sigh.

lhuser123 5y ago

I use https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ to submit my 1040 every year. It’s recommended by the IRS if you know what you are doing.

avodonosov 5y ago

Until policy makers puplish the tax rules in an executable algorithmic form, I am afraid open projects like this will have difficulty to keep up with the regulation changes.

alkonaut 5y ago

The effort should be focused on forcing states to standardize their tax code and states/IRS to provide a simple filing service. If the answer to what’s blocking it is “some corporations wouldn’t like it” then it can’t be that big a problem

davidjytang 5y ago

Taiwan govt prepopulates tax forms for you. Just go to their website via smartphone or computer, you just click next next next and fill in credit card info if you need to pay more tax or bank account number for tax return. It takes me like 5 minutes to file tax every year.

la_fayette 5y ago

Is there something like this for Germany?

sdfjkl 5y ago
There's Elster.de
2ion 5y ago
elster.de is the official means to input your tax info supported by the tax office. However, it's largely an online form with some legalese and dry formal explanations in a sidebar. You can largely use it if you know what you are doing or have the most simplest tax case, but it won't offer you suggestions how to optimize taxes, and doesn't include large lists of items that you could possibly deduct. This service is offered by proprietary tax tools like WISO or QuickSteuer which offer questionnaires trying to cover more details of your tax situation to find out opportunities to optimize, and include large help files that contain examples and explanations. Cost for these proprietary tools can be very low, they go on sale for like €5-€10 at discounters during tax season or are like €20 for the fully featured versions. These tools also manage items like long-term deductions over the years, so that's their lock in effect.

ivolimmen 5y ago

I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff. I am Dutch and my government makes it (relatively) easy to do taxes. We got a website we can go to; it's filled by the government and we just need to verify that it is filled correctly and then click submit. Some people can make adjustments where needed and if needed. You can also let an accountant do it for you but that is optional; but useful if you have had a turbulent year that makes takes more difficult (like selling and buying a new house). When they did not use a website (a few years back) they offered a downloadable application that was available under Windows, MacOS and Linux (GTK). It worked fine.

asciimov 5y ago
> I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff. Our brand of conservatism is informed by Calvinism and hard core Capitalism. Those in charge believe in using religion to control and the purpose of everything is to make someone money.
dado3212 5y ago
Yeah, this kind of thing has been suggested a lot, and then TurboTax lobbies to kill it. See https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... and more.
sofixa 5y ago
Same here in France, there's a website with a multi-stage form, with fields for various things ( revenues, deductions, etc.). Everything they know (revenues from employment, self-employment, investments via French entities, etc.) is pre-filled, you just have to check it, and if something is missing you add it. For 90% of people it's a matter of next-next-check this value with my payslip-next-next.
- amelius 5y ago
  At what point will taxes be collected at the EU level?

the_pwner224 5y ago

You don't need software to file taxes. You can download the forms (1040, etc.) from the IRS website (and your state IRS's website), fill them in, print them out, and mail them to the IRS. It costs a few (literally a few) dollars for the postage and a certificate of mailing from the USPS as proof that you had the forms sent out by the deadline. The forms are not super straightforward but not incredibly complex either. For most normal people with a W-2 or 1099/self-employed income, retirement savings accounts, and some brokerage/investment accounts, you should be able to get it done in a weekend of research & work using resources on the internet, referencing the IRS's instructions for their forms, and using your previous year's return as a reference. And less time in future years once you've figured out how it works. You will need Adobe PDF software, but it's libre and a Windows virtual machine with the network connection disabled will solve that if you use Linux on your computer. It's not for everyone, but if you don't want to support the evil tax industry in the US (there have been a number of posts on HN about this) then it's a good option. Additionally, you can create an account on Turbotax and fill in all your information (but with fake name, SSN, employer tax numbers, etc.) and it'll tell you the amount of remaining tax obligation / tax return that it calculates. So you can use that to verify that you did everything properly. Turbotax only charges money to actually submit the return through them; even if you would normally require a paid TurboTax plan (e.g. for contractors, living in multiple states, etc.) you can still go through the process and get the final number without paying. I did this for the first time this spring and was able to get it done in a weekend. I had W-2 and 1099 income/deductions and lived in multiple states last year. From what I can recall, basically the form 1040 is the 'root of the tree'; your W-2 income goes into that and every other taxable/deductible thing you do ends up aggregated into the 1040. The schedules (A,B,C,...) of the 1040 are like the first level child nodes; each one has a different topic(s) like self employment gains/losses, farming/fishing income, etc. so you can skim over them and see what applies to you, then fill out the ones you need to and enter their totals back into the 1040. The schedules will have lines into which you aggregate specific incomes/deductions, and the instructions for the schedules will have details on how to calculate all of that. And for other special deductions there are lines in the 1040/schedules that mention them. I'm not a CPA so don't blame me if you follow those instructions and something goes wrong.

kamray23 5y ago

bjarneh 5y ago

Filing personal taxes in the US sounds like filing taxes for a company in other countries. A complete nightmare consisting of tons of forms that some bureaucrat dreamed up, which nobody really knows how to fill out correctly. Software exists to fill them out for you, and if you use some well-known software to do it, it's just assumed to be correct by everyone; including the state.

qzw 5y ago
This perception is what keeps a lot of tax preparation companies in business. I know people who could fill out their taxes in 10 minutes, who would instead pay hundreds of dollars every year to have it done by one of those “tax stores.” If US high schools would spend one day to walk kids through filling out a tax return, they’d probably put H&R Block out of business. Which is also why it’s won’t ever happen.
- Moto7451 5y ago
  Both you and the parent are right. I actually did get basic filing instructions in high school and managed to handle my own taxes easily for the first fourteen of my working years. Eventually my taxes fell into the realm of forms that even CPAs can make mistakes on or are unfamiliar with. I am really conservative with this stuff and really make sure to pay what I owe. I, or my CPA, still make mistakes that result in the State or Federal government sending me small “you paid us too much” checks every so often. That’s been true when I’ve done it myself, used TurboTax, or used CPAs. I have a friend with similarly complicated taxes and she just got her first “you owe us $XX” letter for this TY2020 and another $XX check in her favor for TY2018 and TY2019 making the whole thing a wash. If they can tell you that you paid the wrong amount a couple months after filing it feels like for those on a W2 and without unreported 1099 income they could just send a statement with an invoice if you owe and a check if you’re owed. The status quo for those individuals really is as you say. There’s enough complexity baked in that people throw their hands up in the air and just pay the $100 for basic tax prep that should be unnecessary in the first place and is not much more difficult than balancing a checking book.
  - 5y ago

Havoc 5y ago

Sounds like a minefield. How do you know which formulas have been updated for the latest law changes? Hire a tax guy?

zoobab 5y ago

Every country has its own tax laws, impossible to implement and to use. Plus politicians keep changing the tax laws all the time.

leosarev 5y ago

Meanwhile, at site of russian federal tax service: - https://imgur.com/a/NUZZlJM https://imgur.com/a/NUZZlJM (file for tax returns) - https://imgur.com/a/gUGf9wU https://imgur.com/a/gUGf9wU (all income, automatically known by tax authority by electronic data exchange with my employer and broker) - https://imgur.com/a/Nvh5RI8 https://imgur.com/a/Nvh5RI8 (all my estates taxes, automatically calculated and sent as invoice to my bank)

noodlesUK 5y ago

One of the most brutal parts of the US tax system is the informational returns you have to do if you have any international connections at all. If you’re unfortunate enough to live abroad and be self employed or own a small business, you basically get fucked. Lookup IRS form 5471. The US assumes that all people who have anything to do with other countries are billionaire owners of multinationals with armies of lawyers to fill out paperwork.

INTPenis 5y ago

What do people think of GNU Cash? I tried it once when I started up my own company and wanted to keep books. Noticed it was very much adapted for non-US audiences. Even after adding Swedish account codes it was still missing a lot of info. It was essentially a glorified spreadsheed. Could have stuck with Libreoffice calc as far as features went.

franga2000 5y ago
Tried it for a small non-profit and shared your finding that a well-made spreadsheet is just as good if not better. But a larger company would've quickly hit a regulatory wall as well, not just a technical one. For accounting software to be legal under our tax laws it needs to prevent you from doing things that are illegal (back-dating, editing, deleting...) and it needs to have a technical study done to prove that. Such a study is of course expensive and must be commissioned by the vendor. You can imagine how that just isn't possible for GNU Cash and similar community-built programs.

oauea 5y ago

Just move to another country that hasn't made deals with tax companies. Believe it or not, the government is perfectly capable of doing your taxes for you. There is no reason to waste your time on this every year other than corporate greed.

wyclif 5y ago

excel1040.com appears to be down.

nikkinana 5y ago

Clickbait bullshit blog post. Do some actual code asshole.

DudeInBasement 5y ago

What will happen first, Open source Tax software, Or Open source voting software

hankdoupe 5y ago

If you're interested in using open-source tax software for analyzing policy changes, here are a few really cool projects written in Python: - https://taxcalc.pslmodels.org/ https://taxcalc.pslmodels.org/ - webapp here: compute.studio/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain/new/ - https://github.com/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk https://github.com/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk - webapp here: https://uk.policyengine.org/ (disclosure: I'm one of the maintainers of Tax-Calculator and Compute Studio)

city41 5y ago

> Your options are to do it by hand, pay someone like Intuit, or if you are below a certain income threshold get some tax software for free You can also hire an accountant. Our accountant does our taxes for just a tad more than what TurboTax's self employed tier costs. Even if we could get away with TurboTax's deluxe tier, I'd still argue the slight added cost of the accountant is well worth it.

tldrthelaw 5y ago

Tax attorney here, these are great resources and should be encouraged. A lot of folks (looking at you, Intuit) spend a lot of money to make a lot more keeping a lock on the market. These kinds of initiatives don't get everyone all the way there (see: other comments about edge cases) but they can go a long way towards educating folks about what filing looks like -- and at least some of them will give it a go themselves. tldr: good post

joshuaheard 5y ago

All of the IRS forms are in pdf format. The form fields are programmable in Adobe Acrobat. One could code in all the necessary computations into the form fields and combine all the forms into a booklet.

trezemanero 5y ago

>Filing taxes in America sucks Come to Brazil and the Receita Federal will suck you dry

peter303 5y ago

The IRS wanted to automate your tax filing by filling out the basic tax forms from your W2s, 1099s and family size. (Other countries do this) However a strong tax accounting lobby canned it. They substituted with free federal filing for those below median income.