6 ms·

IRS Direct File

bluSCALE4 1y ago
Regardless of its fate, it's open sourced. It can now be forked and made better in far less time.
nerevarthelame 1y ago
Direct File is a service from the United States Government that provides taxpayers the option to electronically file their federal tax return for free, directly with the IRS. The currently proposed budget bill supported by President Trump would end this service.
- Nifty3929 1y ago
  That is sufficiently dumb that I can only hope you're wrong. Any chance you have the relevant text?
  - nsriv 1y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...
  - zerocrates 1y ago
    SEC. 112207. TASK FORCE ON THE TERMINATION OF DIRECT FILE. (a) Termination of Direct File.—As soon as practicable, and not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure that the Internal Revenue Service Direct File program has been terminated.
    - Nifty3929 1y ago
      Thanks, and wow.
  - unsnap_biceps 1y ago
    It's a dead program walking right now anyway, regardless of the budgeting. > The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File. > There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season. https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    Just to add some context, there is right now two similarly named systems: E-file: which is essentially just an api end point for accepting digitized tax returns and is what all the major (paid) tax software uses. Direct file: a web based version of the 1040 irs forms which will, when filled out, submit the forms electronically. === Edit: there are actually three, the third is Free Fillable Forms, which is what I'm actually talking about here === Note that when I say "version of the forms" I mean that quite literally. The interface is as close as html can come to looking like a printed 1040 form and about 1 tiny step up from filling out a pdf version. The forms will occasionally do math for you: some of the fields are marked as the sum of a set of fields and those will automatically do the addition for you, but that's the limit of the automation. For example, to compute your actual owed taxes you need a percentage to multiply by your taxable income, and that number is found by looking through a roughly 10 page table that maps income ranges in brackets of $50 to a specific number (so 0-50 is one number, 50-100 is another, and so on up to several hundred thousand). To get this number for the form you, of course, must open the help documentation in a separate tab and scan through it looking for your bracket. My understanding as to why it works this way is that the irs is basically doing as much as they're legally allowed to. The irs is, as far as i know, forbidden by law, from developing any kind of software that helps you file taxes (or more accurately, competes with turbotax) and this web-form doesn't quite count as breaking that law. I'll note in passing, that as a general rule "both sides" tend to take turbotax money to hobble the irs, this specific direct file was championed and funded by democrats, opposed by republicans and the republican president trump is trying to delete it.
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      Just for everyone's amusement, here's one of the emails I got when I made an error filling out the forms last year: ------ Dear Free File Fillable Forms Taxpayer: Your 2023 federal tax return has been rejected due to the error(s) listed below. Your Submission ID is: 44011101892 Get help resolving your errors by using the Error Search Tool at https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/free-file-fillable-forms/search-tip https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/free-file-fillable-fo... You must follow the search instructions to find solutions When you have your solution(s), sign in to your Free File Fillable Forms account at https://www.freefilefillableforms.com https://www.freefilefillableforms.com Fix your error(s) and resubmit your return. Be sure to re-enter the direct debit date (if used) and the e-file date in the Step 2 tab of Free File Fillable Forms. If you are unable to resolve the error(s), you can mail your tax return and your payment by April 18, 2023 to avoid penalties and interest. Here is your error(s): Issue : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-pattern-valid. Value `` is not facet-valid with respect to pattern `[0-9]{9}` for type `EINType`. The following information may help you determine the form at issue: Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:ReturnData[1]/efile:IRSW2[2]/efile:EmployerEIN[1]
kylecazar 1y ago
I forgot how much I dislike the boilerplate verbosity of Java
- Nifty3929 1y ago
  It always feels like I have build a jet aircraft to cross the street.
  - timewizard 1y ago
    Lucky. I have to build a jet aircraft factory, to build the aircraft, to get across the street.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      But the street itself is fully specified in XML files.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
crznthndr 1y ago
Additional limitations if your household wages are more than $125,000 You can’t use Direct File if: If your wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if you had more than one employer). You file as Married Filing Jointly, and your spouse’s wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if your spouse had more than one employer). You file as Married Filing Jointly, and you and your spouse's wages are more than $250,000. You file as Married Filing Separately, and your wages are more than $125,000.
- underyx 1y ago
  Why are these restrictions in place?
  - dmoy 1y ago
    Eyeballing it, I bet those specific restrictions are in place because: $168.6k is suspiciously the same as the (2024) social security cap, so they probably didn't handle that edge case. $250k is the start of NIIT, so they probably didn't handle that case either.
    - underyx 1y ago
      Thanks for the actual answer!
  - unsnap_biceps 1y ago
    Tax industry lobbyists
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - jljljl 1y ago
    Direct File was rolled out gradually as a pilot program. It was also only available for taxpayers in 12 states. My guess: since the tax code is so complicated, they probably wanted to support the simplest and most common filing cases in the first release. Handling all the edge cases would delay the launch, and prevent them from collecting feedback. If the feedback and demand was positive for v1, they could expand the surface area in the future. Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough
unsnap_biceps 1y ago
I know a number of people who are now using https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/ to file their taxes for free, but I've been hesitant to. Does anyone know offhand if they're actually trustworthy?
- rpgwaiter 1y ago
  I’ve used them the past 3 years for my taxes, great experience and never had a single issue for what that’s worth They don’t spam my email and phone unlike Intuit (even after I deleted my account)
  - agarren 1y ago
    Ditto - no spam at all. I do get reminders that it’s time to file, and conveniently, if nothing has changed since the previous year (address, employer, marital status, etc.) then they can pre-populate the form.
- mleo 1y ago
  First time filing on our own in 25 years and it was great experience. Paid for the state filing. They didn’t seem to really push the add ons for federal.
- agarren 1y ago
  I’ve used them for probably the better part of a decade. I’ve never had any issues, they’re pretty inexpensive, they e-file by default and you get a notification when state and fed are accepted. The wizard is easy to follow and explanations are available. They have bells and whistles like audit protection, that seem reasonable but that I’ve largely avoided. The name might seem a little sketchy, but it’s a legit service. I don’t know about “free” - I’ve always ended up paying to file at least one of state or federal, I don’t recall, but not pricy. (Edit - looking closer, I’ve been using them since 2007. Wow, time flies. Great service, no complaints.)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
timewizard 1y ago
Is there some reason we can't just take the PDF forms, script them so they assist the filer, and then allow a form of digital attestation and filing? What more needs to be done?
- Henchman21 1y ago
  How about we just have the gov't do the math based on what our employers already tell them and then send us a bill or refund. Why must we play this game as if the gov't doesn't know all the info already?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    There are a bunch of us for whom it doesn't have all the info (if any, in fact). Granted, the ranks of the self-employed are a small fraction of all taxpayers, and there's no reason the latter should be forced to do things as if they were part of the former.
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      Yep I think the Pareto principle applies: let’s knock out 80% who can just be sent a bill/check.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Because in many cases they don't know. They don't know about your self-employment income and business expenses. They might not know about your marital status and dependents. They won't know about various credits such as education expenses, solar or EV credits, etc.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - smadge 1y ago
      What percentage of tax filers have a single W-2, maybe a 1099, and take the standard deduction? If I had to guess, 80%.
mixmastamyk 1y ago
This looks like code to run the Direct File service. Is it useful to run it yourself?
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
Really enjoyed the multi-part/multi-file tutorial for the fact-graph, a seemingly core component that I saw referenced in a couple places. > Take a look at [Form 1040][1]. Line 12c asks the taxpayer to add lines 12a and 12b. This is a common pattern on tax forms. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf > There is a relationship betwen lines 12a, 12b, and 12c. In order to know what should be entered in 12c, we need to first know the values of 12a and 12b. > This pattern might remind you of a spreadsheet. If we were to transcribe Form 1040 into Excel, we might imagine that line 12c would be a formula like =SUM(Line12A,Line12B). Excel spreadsheets are _declarative_, which is to say we define the relationships between cells using formulas, but we leave it up to Excel to determine how to solve the spreadsheet. This is their data-relational langage. https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-file/fact-graph-scala/shared/src/main/scala/_tutorial/01_introduction.worksheet.sc https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
- ronbenton 1y ago
  Always great seeing this high quality work coming out of government. Sad to see it being shut down.
- BHSPitMonkey 1y ago
  There's a good presentation deck in the repo worth a quick read: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/docs/engineering/tax-flow/Tax_Code_to_Factgraph.pdf https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/docs/eng...
sadcodemonkey 1y ago
Anyone know the story behind the release of this repo? It doesn't look like an official IRS organization account.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  Good question. This seems to be a more official IRS organization: https://github.com/irsgov https://github.com/irsgov I found a link to that organization here[0] at least, so this one at seems to be official. [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/ides-data-transmission-and-file-preparation https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/ides-data-transm...
ionescu77 1y ago
I bumped into this thread after reading this article today. Makes no sense to post again on HN, but I'll post it here. https://www.404media.co/directfile-open-source-irs-tax-filing-software-turbotax-is-trying-to-kil/ https://www.404media.co/directfile-open-source-irs-tax-filin... Nice initiative to see this code on github.

Regardless of its fate, it's open sourced. It can now be forked and made better in far less time.

Direct File is a service from the United States Government that provides taxpayers the option to electronically file their federal tax return for free, directly with the IRS. The currently proposed budget bill supported by President Trump would end this service.

Nifty3929 1y ago
That is sufficiently dumb that I can only hope you're wrong. Any chance you have the relevant text?
- nsriv 1y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...
- zerocrates 1y ago
  SEC. 112207. TASK FORCE ON THE TERMINATION OF DIRECT FILE. (a) Termination of Direct File.—As soon as practicable, and not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure that the Internal Revenue Service Direct File program has been terminated.
  - Nifty3929 1y ago
    Thanks, and wow.
- unsnap_biceps 1y ago
  It's a dead program walking right now anyway, regardless of the budgeting. > The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File. > There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season. https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Just to add some context, there is right now two similarly named systems: E-file: which is essentially just an api end point for accepting digitized tax returns and is what all the major (paid) tax software uses. Direct file: a web based version of the 1040 irs forms which will, when filled out, submit the forms electronically. === Edit: there are actually three, the third is Free Fillable Forms, which is what I'm actually talking about here === Note that when I say "version of the forms" I mean that quite literally. The interface is as close as html can come to looking like a printed 1040 form and about 1 tiny step up from filling out a pdf version. The forms will occasionally do math for you: some of the fields are marked as the sum of a set of fields and those will automatically do the addition for you, but that's the limit of the automation. For example, to compute your actual owed taxes you need a percentage to multiply by your taxable income, and that number is found by looking through a roughly 10 page table that maps income ranges in brackets of $50 to a specific number (so 0-50 is one number, 50-100 is another, and so on up to several hundred thousand). To get this number for the form you, of course, must open the help documentation in a separate tab and scan through it looking for your bracket. My understanding as to why it works this way is that the irs is basically doing as much as they're legally allowed to. The irs is, as far as i know, forbidden by law, from developing any kind of software that helps you file taxes (or more accurately, competes with turbotax) and this web-form doesn't quite count as breaking that law. I'll note in passing, that as a general rule "both sides" tend to take turbotax money to hobble the irs, this specific direct file was championed and funded by democrats, opposed by republicans and the republican president trump is trying to delete it.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    Just for everyone's amusement, here's one of the emails I got when I made an error filling out the forms last year: ------ Dear Free File Fillable Forms Taxpayer: Your 2023 federal tax return has been rejected due to the error(s) listed below. Your Submission ID is: 44011101892 Get help resolving your errors by using the Error Search Tool at https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/free-file-fillable-forms/search-tip https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/free-file-fillable-fo... You must follow the search instructions to find solutions When you have your solution(s), sign in to your Free File Fillable Forms account at https://www.freefilefillableforms.com https://www.freefilefillableforms.com Fix your error(s) and resubmit your return. Be sure to re-enter the direct debit date (if used) and the e-file date in the Step 2 tab of Free File Fillable Forms. If you are unable to resolve the error(s), you can mail your tax return and your payment by April 18, 2023 to avoid penalties and interest. Here is your error(s): Issue : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-pattern-valid. Value `` is not facet-valid with respect to pattern `[0-9]{9}` for type `EINType`. The following information may help you determine the form at issue: Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:ReturnData[1]/efile:IRSW2[2]/efile:EmployerEIN[1]

kylecazar 1y ago

I forgot how much I dislike the boilerplate verbosity of Java

Nifty3929 1y ago
It always feels like I have build a jet aircraft to cross the street.
- timewizard 1y ago
  Lucky. I have to build a jet aircraft factory, to build the aircraft, to get across the street.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    But the street itself is fully specified in XML files.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

crznthndr 1y ago

Additional limitations if your household wages are more than $125,000 You can’t use Direct File if: If your wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if you had more than one employer). You file as Married Filing Jointly, and your spouse’s wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if your spouse had more than one employer). You file as Married Filing Jointly, and you and your spouse's wages are more than $250,000. You file as Married Filing Separately, and your wages are more than $125,000.

underyx 1y ago
Why are these restrictions in place?
- dmoy 1y ago
  Eyeballing it, I bet those specific restrictions are in place because: $168.6k is suspiciously the same as the (2024) social security cap, so they probably didn't handle that edge case. $250k is the start of NIIT, so they probably didn't handle that case either.
  - underyx 1y ago
    Thanks for the actual answer!
- unsnap_biceps 1y ago
  Tax industry lobbyists
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jljljl 1y ago
  Direct File was rolled out gradually as a pilot program. It was also only available for taxpayers in 12 states. My guess: since the tax code is so complicated, they probably wanted to support the simplest and most common filing cases in the first release. Handling all the edge cases would delay the launch, and prevent them from collecting feedback. If the feedback and demand was positive for v1, they could expand the surface area in the future. Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough

unsnap_biceps 1y ago

I know a number of people who are now using https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/ to file their taxes for free, but I've been hesitant to. Does anyone know offhand if they're actually trustworthy?

rpgwaiter 1y ago
I’ve used them the past 3 years for my taxes, great experience and never had a single issue for what that’s worth They don’t spam my email and phone unlike Intuit (even after I deleted my account)
- agarren 1y ago
  Ditto - no spam at all. I do get reminders that it’s time to file, and conveniently, if nothing has changed since the previous year (address, employer, marital status, etc.) then they can pre-populate the form.
mleo 1y ago
First time filing on our own in 25 years and it was great experience. Paid for the state filing. They didn’t seem to really push the add ons for federal.
agarren 1y ago
I’ve used them for probably the better part of a decade. I’ve never had any issues, they’re pretty inexpensive, they e-file by default and you get a notification when state and fed are accepted. The wizard is easy to follow and explanations are available. They have bells and whistles like audit protection, that seem reasonable but that I’ve largely avoided. The name might seem a little sketchy, but it’s a legit service. I don’t know about “free” - I’ve always ended up paying to file at least one of state or federal, I don’t recall, but not pricy. (Edit - looking closer, I’ve been using them since 2007. Wow, time flies. Great service, no complaints.)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

timewizard 1y ago

Is there some reason we can't just take the PDF forms, script them so they assist the filer, and then allow a form of digital attestation and filing? What more needs to be done?

Henchman21 1y ago
How about we just have the gov't do the math based on what our employers already tell them and then send us a bill or refund. Why must we play this game as if the gov't doesn't know all the info already?
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  There are a bunch of us for whom it doesn't have all the info (if any, in fact). Granted, the ranks of the self-employed are a small fraction of all taxpayers, and there's no reason the latter should be forced to do things as if they were part of the former.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    Yep I think the Pareto principle applies: let’s knock out 80% who can just be sent a bill/check.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Because in many cases they don't know. They don't know about your self-employment income and business expenses. They might not know about your marital status and dependents. They won't know about various credits such as education expenses, solar or EV credits, etc.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - smadge 1y ago
    What percentage of tax filers have a single W-2, maybe a 1099, and take the standard deduction? If I had to guess, 80%.

mixmastamyk 1y ago

This looks like code to run the Direct File service. Is it useful to run it yourself?

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

Really enjoyed the multi-part/multi-file tutorial for the fact-graph, a seemingly core component that I saw referenced in a couple places. > Take a look at [Form 1040][1]. Line 12c asks the taxpayer to add lines 12a and 12b. This is a common pattern on tax forms. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf > There is a relationship betwen lines 12a, 12b, and 12c. In order to know what should be entered in 12c, we need to first know the values of 12a and 12b. > This pattern might remind you of a spreadsheet. If we were to transcribe Form 1040 into Excel, we might imagine that line 12c would be a formula like =SUM(Line12A,Line12B). Excel spreadsheets are _declarative_, which is to say we define the relationships between cells using formulas, but we leave it up to Excel to determine how to solve the spreadsheet. This is their data-relational langage. https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-file/fact-graph-scala/shared/src/main/scala/_tutorial/01_introduction.worksheet.sc https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...

ronbenton 1y ago
Always great seeing this high quality work coming out of government. Sad to see it being shut down.
BHSPitMonkey 1y ago
There's a good presentation deck in the repo worth a quick read: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/docs/engineering/tax-flow/Tax_Code_to_Factgraph.pdf https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/docs/eng...

sadcodemonkey 1y ago

Anyone know the story behind the release of this repo? It doesn't look like an official IRS organization account.

Zambyte 1y ago
Good question. This seems to be a more official IRS organization: https://github.com/irsgov https://github.com/irsgov I found a link to that organization here[0] at least, so this one at seems to be official. [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/ides-data-transmission-and-file-preparation https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/ides-data-transm...

ionescu77 1y ago

I bumped into this thread after reading this article today. Makes no sense to post again on HN, but I'll post it here. https://www.404media.co/directfile-open-source-irs-tax-filing-software-turbotax-is-trying-to-kil/ https://www.404media.co/directfile-open-source-irs-tax-filin... Nice initiative to see this code on github.