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I figure that the source code is not the hard part of the IRS making this available to the public, but the interoperability with the revenue system, and its ver

I figure that the source code is not the hard part of the IRS making this available to the public, but the interoperability with the revenue system, and its verified adherence to the current tax code. Couldn't those things still be killed by the administration even if the source code is available publicly?

xhevahir 1y ago
Right, politicians and officials working on behalf of the tax-filing lobby could introduce lots of changes to the tax code with a view to making this software useless.
- glookler 1y ago
  The point of open sourcing from a dying ship is that the groups that can modify this software and resell it all start from it as a baseline. Is TurboTax all lean mean code available at a low enough price while still meeting profit expectations if it needs drastic changes?
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    I mean… in some sense, it might be nice is the company doing your tax preparation is not too lean and mean, their whole point is to eat the hit if they screw it up, right? The math is not actually hard. But, realistically, I guess if a self-service tax prep company messed up your taxes, they’d make sure you end up in arbitration.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      The form you sign to authorize efiling says "I declare that I have examined a copy of the income tax return ... and to the best of my knowledge and belief, it is true, correct, and complete." If you think Intuit is going to cover you, you haven't really seen the things they do.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    What is this repo's marketing budget by any chance? Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.
    - glookler 1y ago
      Intuit can spend all the money they can convince investors to lose relative to last year and expectations, but they'll have a yggdrasil of companies to buy out from a turn-key solution and all their costs fighting OMB will amount to nothing if they screw one buyout up and get an updated software drop for a new round of $5 filers. The companies Intuit will have to buy out don't have to make any profit per filer, they just have to take filers away from Inuit.
BryantD 1y ago
Yeah, absolutely. FWIW, the repo notes: "Direct File interprets the United States' Internal Revenue Code (26 USC) as plain language questions, the answers to which should be known to taxpayers without need of external instructions or publications. Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use." So in theory it's useful now, but as you say it could easily change.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  The tax code is riddled with euphemisms like EITC that don't mean what it says on the tin. There's no way normies can manage that without instructions.
  - kccqzy 1y ago
    I thought OP's point is that normies who have no idea what EITC is can simply answer a series of simpler questions that don't mention EITC, and the software figures out whether they can claim the EITC.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - gleenn 1y ago
    Yes but there are plenty of companies or people that may want to know how the code works and would be motivated enough to read through the code to understand it and having it there in the public makes that possible.
  - jandrese 1y ago
    There are also ambiguous edge cases that can't be answered until someone is audited and the IRS and the Tax attorney hash it out in court. For example I installed Solar panels many years ago and read the exact wording on the Solar Tax Credit to try to figure out if you could include roof repairs under the panels in the credit. The wording was something like "all costs associated with a solar install". Every installer I talked to said yes, but it seemed dubious so I tried calling the IRS help line to get the answer and the help line was no help at all. A few years later and some court battles lost and that answer is now firmly a "no", making me glad I ignored the installer's advice. How is tax prep software supposed to handle a situation like that? Some of the for pay options include "audit protection", but I don't know how far that goes. I guess you can attempt to pass all liability on to the customer, but even that seems a bit risky. And definitely the IRS has its own jargon that doesn't always make sense to the layperson. Why, for example, is a form that you fill out once per tax year called a "schedule"? It doesn't organize anything by date or time!
HPsquared 1y ago
Sounds like a business opportunity.
- nitwit005 1y ago
  The whole point of the program was to eliminate that business opportunity.
  - gowld 1y ago
    Why? What's wrong with people getting paid to improve upon the government's work?
    - braebo 1y ago
      Nothing but that’s not what was happening.
    - acdha 1y ago
      The idea is that normal people shouldn’t have to pay to do something the government requires everyone to do. I’ve heard multiple non-Americans express amazement that people with simple jobs have to do anything other than confirm or perhaps update the data which the tax collectors already have because they weren’t thinking of it from the perspective of being a useful marketing tool for fearmongering about the government.
      - tombert 1y ago
        I have told this story before here, but it's relevant. In 2021, I filed my 2020 taxes, and a few months later I get a letter from the IRS saying that I owed $8000 because I forgot to report a large stock transaction. I owed $7000 + a $1000 fine. I wasn't mad at all about the $7000, I definitely owed that and it was just an oversight on my end, these things happen, and I was able to get the fine lowered by calling the IRS [1], so that wasn't a huge deal . What did annoy me was why do I have to do anything? If the IRS knows about the transaction and is able to complain about me not paying enough, that suggests that they already have the information that I'm sending them. Why make me buy software and copy information from a piece of paper into that software, just for the IRS to check it against the numbers that they already have? I understand that you might need to issue corrections, and maybe the software should exist for something like that, but it doesn't seem like it should exist otherwise. [1] Who at least in my case was actually really polite and helpful! I had heard horror stories but that was definitely not the case for me. The people I talked to were very sympathetic and nice.
fitsumbelay 1y ago
Piggybacking, I think the "hard part" also includes the decades of success that the tax prep lobby's had in protecting its business interests at the cost of US citizen's welfare. Although the number of states that provide free direct filing has grown from last year -- which I only remember to be substantially less than the 25 who do so today -- it's unclear what the problem is with the remaining 25 including DC where I live
freeone3000 1y ago
I do not know of this capability currently, but if it has enough for eFile, it can also be used to generate a paper return.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  For years prior to last good commit. The rules change every year.
mystified5016 1y ago
I wouldn't say interop is a huge deal, the main time and cost sink is translating the recursive Gordian knots of tax law into a logically cohesive structure that can be evaluated programmatically. And then you (ideally) must prove its correctness. Imagine pair programming with a tax lawyer. I'd rather eat my own hands.
- rsti0000 1y ago
  DirectFile wasn’t meant to handle complicated edge cases. Most filers have a w2 and a few 1099s, use the standard deduction, and claim a few common credits (e.g., child and earned-income). They could file for free in a few minutes with directfile.
NoahZuniga 1y ago
> Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use The interoperability with the revenue system is provided by a different project, and this API is also used by turbotax and the like. It won't be going away. The interoperability is not the hard part.
- b112 1y ago
  It could easily go away, if there are claims of people abusing the API, or using "unlicensed software to use the API" causing errors. By licensed, I mean "approved to use the API". There could also be pushes to monetize the API, "Why is this service free!?". Meaning they'd likely require a need to be incorporated, setup a commercial account with them, and have payment method on file, and on and on. My point is, I can think of dozens of sneaky ways to make that pesky API go away, and I'm not even trying.
  - NoahZuniga 1y ago
    What I'm getting at is that the interoperability is not the hard part of this project.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      You're confusing technical ease with political desirability.
      - NoahZuniga 1y ago
        No, just that this interoperability already exists, and is not a hard part for this project.
sowbug 1y ago
Imagine this source code becoming the unit tests for the legal code. Future tax-code changes would be accompanied by corresponding changes in GitHub. Inconsistencies would surface as new code and tests break the old ones. As courts introduce new nuances to the law's interpretation, new unit tests would follow. This wouldn't replace human judgment; nobody in power would allow that. But even the capriciousness of politics can be expressed as Boolean logic (var isDeductible = taxpayerIsMe && !taxpayerIsYou). The tests could at least memorialize all the pork.
- naikrovek 1y ago
  good luck with that; interpretation make things like this very difficult, if not impossible. I agree that this would be nice, however. as a non-lawyer and someone who considers themself to be not a "real" developer (even though I write software every day) I have often wondered how alike law and code are, really, when it comes to defining intent via a keyboard.
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    I would prefer it if any change to the IRS rules must be accompanied by a reference implementation and lots of tests.
    - ted_dunning 1y ago
      Tell me how you will write a unit test for determining the percentage of your utilities that is deductible on Schedule C. Or a unit test that determines whether the discussion during a meal with a customer was "substantially about business matters".
      - yencabulator 1y ago
        What percentage of US citizens expense business meals? This is all about automating the simple cases. Anything more complex is an input to the system, the system can still be tested.
      - 1y ago

xhevahir 1y ago

Right, politicians and officials working on behalf of the tax-filing lobby could introduce lots of changes to the tax code with a view to making this software useless.

glookler 1y ago
The point of open sourcing from a dying ship is that the groups that can modify this software and resell it all start from it as a baseline. Is TurboTax all lean mean code available at a low enough price while still meeting profit expectations if it needs drastic changes?
- bee_rider 1y ago
  I mean… in some sense, it might be nice is the company doing your tax preparation is not too lean and mean, their whole point is to eat the hit if they screw it up, right? The math is not actually hard. But, realistically, I guess if a self-service tax prep company messed up your taxes, they’d make sure you end up in arbitration.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    The form you sign to authorize efiling says "I declare that I have examined a copy of the income tax return ... and to the best of my knowledge and belief, it is true, correct, and complete." If you think Intuit is going to cover you, you haven't really seen the things they do.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  What is this repo's marketing budget by any chance? Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.
  - glookler 1y ago
    Intuit can spend all the money they can convince investors to lose relative to last year and expectations, but they'll have a yggdrasil of companies to buy out from a turn-key solution and all their costs fighting OMB will amount to nothing if they screw one buyout up and get an updated software drop for a new round of $5 filers. The companies Intuit will have to buy out don't have to make any profit per filer, they just have to take filers away from Inuit.

BryantD 1y ago

Yeah, absolutely. FWIW, the repo notes: "Direct File interprets the United States' Internal Revenue Code (26 USC) as plain language questions, the answers to which should be known to taxpayers without need of external instructions or publications. Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use." So in theory it's useful now, but as you say it could easily change.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
The tax code is riddled with euphemisms like EITC that don't mean what it says on the tin. There's no way normies can manage that without instructions.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  I thought OP's point is that normies who have no idea what EITC is can simply answer a series of simpler questions that don't mention EITC, and the software figures out whether they can claim the EITC.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- gleenn 1y ago
  Yes but there are plenty of companies or people that may want to know how the code works and would be motivated enough to read through the code to understand it and having it there in the public makes that possible.
- jandrese 1y ago
  There are also ambiguous edge cases that can't be answered until someone is audited and the IRS and the Tax attorney hash it out in court. For example I installed Solar panels many years ago and read the exact wording on the Solar Tax Credit to try to figure out if you could include roof repairs under the panels in the credit. The wording was something like "all costs associated with a solar install". Every installer I talked to said yes, but it seemed dubious so I tried calling the IRS help line to get the answer and the help line was no help at all. A few years later and some court battles lost and that answer is now firmly a "no", making me glad I ignored the installer's advice. How is tax prep software supposed to handle a situation like that? Some of the for pay options include "audit protection", but I don't know how far that goes. I guess you can attempt to pass all liability on to the customer, but even that seems a bit risky. And definitely the IRS has its own jargon that doesn't always make sense to the layperson. Why, for example, is a form that you fill out once per tax year called a "schedule"? It doesn't organize anything by date or time!

HPsquared 1y ago

Sounds like a business opportunity.

nitwit005 1y ago
The whole point of the program was to eliminate that business opportunity.
- gowld 1y ago
  Why? What's wrong with people getting paid to improve upon the government's work?
  - braebo 1y ago
    Nothing but that’s not what was happening.
  - acdha 1y ago
    The idea is that normal people shouldn’t have to pay to do something the government requires everyone to do. I’ve heard multiple non-Americans express amazement that people with simple jobs have to do anything other than confirm or perhaps update the data which the tax collectors already have because they weren’t thinking of it from the perspective of being a useful marketing tool for fearmongering about the government.
    - tombert 1y ago
      I have told this story before here, but it's relevant. In 2021, I filed my 2020 taxes, and a few months later I get a letter from the IRS saying that I owed $8000 because I forgot to report a large stock transaction. I owed $7000 + a $1000 fine. I wasn't mad at all about the $7000, I definitely owed that and it was just an oversight on my end, these things happen, and I was able to get the fine lowered by calling the IRS [1], so that wasn't a huge deal . What did annoy me was why do I have to do anything? If the IRS knows about the transaction and is able to complain about me not paying enough, that suggests that they already have the information that I'm sending them. Why make me buy software and copy information from a piece of paper into that software, just for the IRS to check it against the numbers that they already have? I understand that you might need to issue corrections, and maybe the software should exist for something like that, but it doesn't seem like it should exist otherwise. [1] Who at least in my case was actually really polite and helpful! I had heard horror stories but that was definitely not the case for me. The people I talked to were very sympathetic and nice.

fitsumbelay 1y ago

Piggybacking, I think the "hard part" also includes the decades of success that the tax prep lobby's had in protecting its business interests at the cost of US citizen's welfare. Although the number of states that provide free direct filing has grown from last year -- which I only remember to be substantially less than the 25 who do so today -- it's unclear what the problem is with the remaining 25 including DC where I live

freeone3000 1y ago

I do not know of this capability currently, but if it has enough for eFile, it can also be used to generate a paper return.

yencabulator 1y ago
For years prior to last good commit. The rules change every year.

mystified5016 1y ago

I wouldn't say interop is a huge deal, the main time and cost sink is translating the recursive Gordian knots of tax law into a logically cohesive structure that can be evaluated programmatically. And then you (ideally) must prove its correctness. Imagine pair programming with a tax lawyer. I'd rather eat my own hands.

rsti0000 1y ago
DirectFile wasn’t meant to handle complicated edge cases. Most filers have a w2 and a few 1099s, use the standard deduction, and claim a few common credits (e.g., child and earned-income). They could file for free in a few minutes with directfile.

NoahZuniga 1y ago

> Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use The interoperability with the revenue system is provided by a different project, and this API is also used by turbotax and the like. It won't be going away. The interoperability is not the hard part.

b112 1y ago
It could easily go away, if there are claims of people abusing the API, or using "unlicensed software to use the API" causing errors. By licensed, I mean "approved to use the API". There could also be pushes to monetize the API, "Why is this service free!?". Meaning they'd likely require a need to be incorporated, setup a commercial account with them, and have payment method on file, and on and on. My point is, I can think of dozens of sneaky ways to make that pesky API go away, and I'm not even trying.
- NoahZuniga 1y ago
  What I'm getting at is that the interoperability is not the hard part of this project.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    You're confusing technical ease with political desirability.
    - NoahZuniga 1y ago
      No, just that this interoperability already exists, and is not a hard part for this project.

sowbug 1y ago

Imagine this source code becoming the unit tests for the legal code. Future tax-code changes would be accompanied by corresponding changes in GitHub. Inconsistencies would surface as new code and tests break the old ones. As courts introduce new nuances to the law's interpretation, new unit tests would follow. This wouldn't replace human judgment; nobody in power would allow that. But even the capriciousness of politics can be expressed as Boolean logic (var isDeductible = taxpayerIsMe && !taxpayerIsYou). The tests could at least memorialize all the pork.

naikrovek 1y ago
good luck with that; interpretation make things like this very difficult, if not impossible. I agree that this would be nice, however. as a non-lawyer and someone who considers themself to be not a "real" developer (even though I write software every day) I have often wondered how alike law and code are, really, when it comes to defining intent via a keyboard.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  I would prefer it if any change to the IRS rules must be accompanied by a reference implementation and lots of tests.
  - ted_dunning 1y ago
    Tell me how you will write a unit test for determining the percentage of your utilities that is deductible on Schedule C. Or a unit test that determines whether the discussion during a meal with a customer was "substantially about business matters".
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      What percentage of US citizens expense business meals? This is all about automating the simple cases. Anything more complex is an input to the system, the system can still be tested.
    - 1y ago