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submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 463 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

really good article with a couple surprises in there.

"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

[-] [email protected] 109 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Dunno, sounds like some fucking commie shit to be. And not the kind i can someyimes get on board with when it comes time to do secret police shebanigans, but the bad scary kind where they dont even have a use for police.

Wouldn't it be better to just give the code for free to a good corporate citizen who can be entrusted with its stewardship?

Edit: yes of course we rent it back!

[-] [email protected] 78 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.

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[-] [email protected] 44 points 4 days ago

Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke

[-] [email protected] 39 points 4 days ago

because its the internet in 2025 and we simply cannot tell anymore

[-] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

I can think of two reasons and both of them are hilarious.

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[-] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

Was the US so behind that they didn't have a way to file taxes online for free?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Not just that. The tax preparation industry has gotten tax more complex and harder to file in the US

You get the government you can afford. The tax preparation industry has been able to buy several governments

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Unfortunately yes

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yes, thanks to the powerful lobby from Turbotax.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Not behind, ahead. Just you wait.

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

Oh that's awesome. I hope it can still be accepted by the IRS for the future (if we still have one in ~3 years) but it would be neat to just be able to have an open standard for online filing.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Don't worry, there will always be an IRS for us plebes.

[-] [email protected] 145 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 72 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Hurry up and clone that ASAP, this is gonna get taken down once DOGE realizes what it is

[-] [email protected] 51 points 4 days ago

More likely they'll just turn off or unpublish the API that it depends on.

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[-] [email protected] 42 points 4 days ago

What happened to the title of this?? Jeez

[-] [email protected] 47 points 4 days ago

“The IRS Tax Filing Software that TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced” might be more clear but headlines try to cut those sorts of words out, unfortunately at the cost of readability sometimes.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)

[-] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

But most of those aren't used as verbs here.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

right, but you can only tell what's used as a verb after you've parsed it.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago
[-] [email protected] 104 points 4 days ago

TurboTax owned buy intuit, part of H&R block who has partnered with credit karma. Everything is a monopoly now

[-] [email protected] 39 points 4 days ago

I'm pretty sure intuit and h&r block are competitors, not the same compamy.

[-] [email protected] 68 points 4 days ago

You are correct.

Here's an annoying thing i just learned about H&R Block:

As of 2022, H&R Block's tax preparation service shares user data with Facebook, which can be used for targeted advertising. This can include sensitive financial information from health savings accounts and college expenses, and this tax data is shared without consent even for users who opt out of the service.

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago

It's licensed under CC0 to anyone wondering. BSD 0-Clause would probably be better but still fantastic.

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[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago

I got told I couldn't get a tax return because they flagged me for potential fraud, so I have to go to ID.me to verify.. but then my account got banned while trying to verify my information.

Fml

[-] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Guess that means they don't want your money! Woo! (this is not legal advice, pay your taxes)

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I love id.me, I'm so glad I had to give my facial data to them to collect unemployment insurance!

[-] [email protected] 54 points 4 days ago

It's already got 4 PRs

lol

[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago
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[-] bdonvr 53 points 4 days ago

Unless it's maintained it won't be of much use. It needs to be kept up to date with tax laws, and it relies entirely on the IRS accepting the generated returns. It seems it may function for now, though.

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

[-] [email protected] 44 points 4 days ago
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[-] [email protected] 37 points 4 days ago

Suck a bag of dicks, TurboTax

[-] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago

The more money you pay someone to find the loop holes in the tax code the less likely you are to support out government and its war machine.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

HA get fucked turbotax

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this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
1499 points (99.7% liked)

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