Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
23 comments
·November 5, 2025jordanb
grandpoobah
Such a cheap bribe holy crap.
codeddesign
[flagged]
epistasis
> Don’t be an idiot. ... failed worse than the Obamacare rollout
This is a very rude and inappropriate way to deliver your misinformation. The program was hugely popular and successfull
hyperrail
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file <- Direct File's web app source code is public-domain and published on GitHub!
Obviously the 2025 version will be out of date for the 2026 filing season, though public code means it can always be revived by anyone else.
(previous HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131901 )
cozzyd
As long as they don't kill FreeFillableForms...
uvaursi
Direct File won’t happen in 2026, Intuit tells IRS
sublinear
What was wrong with using Free File Fillable Forms in the first place? It's the real deal forms just online and with nothing obscured or sugar coated.
I use it every year, and while I wouldn't exactly say I enjoy doing my taxes, I do enjoy being fully aware what I'm filing and not being forced to do it on paper just because others have obtuse opinions or are lazy.
girl2
This wont bode well.........
polski-g
Turbo tax is free for federal filers with no business income, same thing as this service. Except now no taxpayer dollars were spent on maintaining this. This would have been useful if it also did state taxes, which turbo tax is not free for.
null
charcircuit
With the rise of AI there is no excuse on why tax software should be so hard to make.
SamuelAdams
You’re going to give your tax data - some of the most sensitive data to some constituents - to OpenAI / Google / some other startup?
That seems like a nightmare of a product as far as privacy is concerned.
jordanb
Fwiw they have already bought all you financial info from Experian
https://theworknumber.com/solutions/products/income-employme...
simonw
I think they meant that it should be a lot faster to develop software that implements the tax code with the assistance of AI coding tools.
amluto
ISTM one ought to be able to use AI to translate the official IRS forms to a machine readable format. No personal data needs to go anywhere near the AI.
Even if you do want to feed your personal data to an AI tax bot, this should be easily within the capabilities of a model that can run locally.
sublinear
> translate the official IRS forms to a machine readable format
The instructions for each form published by the IRS every year are already written by professional technical writers to be unambiguous. Do you mean that someone ought to write a simplified english grammar transpiler? I think that would genuinely be interesting. What's missing are the guidelines the technical writers are using, but that can probably be derived.
estimator7292
The entire reason that tax software is hard is that it can NEVER produce a wrong answer. Plus tax law is about ten thousand times more complicated than you're assuming.
charcircuit
>it can NEVER produce a wrong answer
As the government it should be possible to reduce the negative impact of making mistakes.
>Plus tax law is about ten thousand times more complicated than you're assuming.
Then start simple. You don't have to cover all of tax law at the start.
Money well spent
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-makers-turbotax-gave-trum...