It sounds like this could be functional?
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.
It would need to be kept updated with changing laws but could we see forks turn into a FOSS tax prep software?
That would be pretty awesome
Intuit about to hire a "private Security company"
See ONBOARDING.md if you want to jump into running Direct File locally
HELL YEAH, DEFINITELY GONNA DO A DRY RUN OF MY TAXES!!
They will change something meaningless, yet fundamental about how taxes are filed, simply to render this source code useless. Watch.
You mean like replacing income tax with tariffs? /s
For us None-Americans: Is that good or bad?
I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
As you may know, due to lobbying from tax preparation companies, filing US taxes is extremely over complication and typically requires you to pay someone to do it.
Even though I’ve done my own taxes in the past, I just paid someone else $300 to do it as it’s such a confusing nightmare of paperwork.
Well, the IRS had a program that let you file for free if you met certain conditions. Basically, the average American that is low income could just go through the IRS website to very easily file their taxes.
The current administration got rid of that program. It looks like someone posted the source code that was used to file your taxes.
I guess someone could modify this code so it could be used in a limited way in the future, but it would require constant updates as the tax code changes.
Yeah but changes to the tax code are incremental. If this contains a foundation-layer framework for calculating taxes, it's a huge bootstrap to just do the YoY changes as opposed to building up.that foundation.
My point is that a tax expert will need to actually do it.
At least this can save a lot of time for those tax accountants
It's good in a sense that we can look over the code for any tomfoolery, but unless there is a smoking gun, it's pretty worthless because it's closed source by nature, and any changes they make won't be published. Still, code nerds gonna code nerd.
Everything the US Federal government produces is Public Domain, by law.
Sure, but you have to file FOIA and wait. It's not truly open source.
Public Domain meets the OSI's definition of "open source" and the FSF's definition of "Free Software." What you're describing is the state of it not being published yet.
You are correct. I guess what I should have said is that this is what they want us to see, no necessarily what they are using.
It looks like a legit distribution too, they removed sensitive code and rewrote functionality for this release
Well, that’s interesting
There is even a docker-compose.yml script.
Slightly off-topic (EU only) but: https://publiccode.eu/de/
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
