IRS Direct File on GitHub

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.

~30-50% of the population has a pretty simple tax return that they could probably do by filling out the form directly by hand...

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!

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.

While this seems to apply to a good amount of people, it seems the IRS has an informative enough page https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-in...

However, it is most likely that the people claiming EITC are the least likely to understand the information there

What is this repo's marketing budget by any chance?

Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.

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.

I would prefer it if any change to the IRS rules must be accompanied by a reference implementation and lots of tests.

What I'm getting at is that the interoperability is not the hard part of this project.

Why? What's wrong with people getting paid to improve upon the government's work?

Yes. I think micronaut is kind of the sweet spot right now.

I agree. Unless you actually need back-pressure, which almost every use case I've seen does not, it's just obfuscating simple API calls.

Seems perfectly readable to me, and I haven't used Java professionally in over a decade. What specifically do you find problematic?

Well... depending on your default level of zoom.

After staring at code for 12 hours a day for a few decades my zoom is 125% by default.

So long as you abandon the concept of windows and run your text editor in full screen mode. Good luck with side-by-side diffs.

> Unless this forked version will then print out a bunch of forms for someone to physically mail in

Well yes, this is in essence what tax return preparation software has always been; The end result is a completed set of values to fill into the boxes of form 1040 (and whatever additional forms are deemed to be required), which can then be filed electronically or written/printed on paper to be returned at an office or by mail.

The IRS accepts efilings in a prescribed format so that isnt a danger. If you look at a tax transcript produced from efiling vs a paper return, there is no material difference besides the fields related to how they were submitted.

Never turn down an opportunity to spew breathless hyperbole into Hacker News!

In other words, think of Copyright. A Copyright holder can apply any license they like, and change the licenses for new versions whenever they like. Public Domain is explicit forfeiting the Copyright, which means authors cannot enforce any license (and anyone can just take their work and declare it it's theirs, apply licenses etc).

PS: AFAIK, however, Authorship rights are different from Copyright, and cannot be given/passed as Copyrights, at least in US.

I hope you're right, but this administration so far has found almost no limit to the number of projects, lives, roles and institutions it can destroy or at least attempt to destroy. And the party that is supposed to be acting as the Opposition is basically letting them do whatever they want unhindered. Unless you consider "holding up little signs and making frowny-faces" to count as "doing something."

The House budget bill is likely to separate more people from health insurance coverage than the ACA increased it by. It may not be an explicitly "repeal the ACA" act, but practically speaking, it will have a similar effect.

But Democrats created the program? Why do you expect they wouldn't support it?

Tax return on a postcard is still in the Republican area of ideas, but they can't seem to get enough actual Congressional Republicans to come on board. It's frustrating. The problem to me is that the Democrats have become so uncompetitive in large swathes of the country, that too many center/moderates/status quos adapt Republican cover to get into office.

I'm sure Democrats can complain about their Senators in the same language.

I was under the impression that the OP was talking about the SHARE It Act.

That is the current ruling party. Nobody is trying to kill the SHARE It Act. The Direct File was a pilot program. There are other options: https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-f...