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.
Here's to hoping they can outcompete TurboTax so brutally that Intuit won't be able to pay for all those lobbyists anymore.
And yes, "As a work of the US Government" it is dedicated to the Public Domain by law.
> Releasing Direct File’s source code demonstrates that the IRS is fulfilling its obligations under the SHARE IT Act[1] (three weeks ahead of schedule!).
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9566
Journalism is labor
I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.
git add .
git commit --amend -m "initial commit"
git push -f origin HEAD
git commit --amend --no-editThis probably wouldn't apply to the "initial commit" problem, but I almost always use fixup instead of amend, ex:
git add foo.code
git commit --fixup {commit_with}
git rebase -i --autosquash {main_or_whatever}
This is particularly useful for the review process: All the changes during the review process can be "fixup" commits, allowing reviewers to easily see what did (or didn't) change since their last interaction. At the same time, all the fiddly fixes and back-and-forth stuff won't be in the final history, only a smaller number of "real" commits that future maintainers would care about.
https://github.com/git/git/commit/b4019f045646b1770a80394da8...
IRS Direct File - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131901 - May 2025 (62 comments)
"The IRS will no longer accept returns directly."Where are you finding that quote, I don't see it on the Direct File homepage [0]
EDIT: Ah, I see now, it was from paxys's original post [1], I assumed it was meant to be an official quote from the IRS somewhere.
> For the 2024 tax season yes. Funding bill removes it for 2025 onward.
So it's adding an extra $240B in deficit per year (on top of an already ~6-7% of GDP deficit).
Of course, this page doesn't include the $1M inauguration donation, so it's still incomplete.
Disbanding 18F was a crime. This made it abundantly clear that the E doesn't stand for efficiency.
Public Domain means you can legally take their code, riddle it with malware, and distribute, claiming that's the real and true Direct File source code, and you are its author. What you do with malware is a different legal issue of course.
So I'm not sure proving you are commit owner by signing it is really helpful if anyone can do it as well, and there's no copyright holder to decide who's right.
Let's say you see a green checkmark on GitHub that confirms the commit was really made by GitHub user @totally_legit_government_absolutely_not_hacker.
Unless you already have their public GPG key in your private keychain, and you marked it as "trusted" previously, there's not really much more info to that.
UPDATE: besides, the government is like a million people, some of them are malicious actors.
what do you propose they do, being entirely out of power?
Without this engagement, even if it's just futile noisemaking, the voters will surely think in the next election cycle "why should we vote for you, when you haven't done anything the last 2 years?"
I have seen Dems constantly attacking Trump, if you haven't consider the news you consume may simply be different. There is not one mainstream to push anymore.
as for the "mainstream social media", I'm not sure how effective the instagrams, tiktoks, etc. are at delivering these messages. I know some congressmen on are on there. Perhaps not enough, though. Or perhaps they don't get how to reach their people.
Where is the bullhorn the democrats are supposed to be using that isn't literally owned by a rich guy who benefits from lower taxes when the democrats are not in power?
Twitter is owned by Elon. Facebook by Zuck.
In the House, or rather out of the house, they could get their media circus in 10,000% better shape than it is in right now, and consistently deliver a powerful, viral, troll-y, and savvy message about Trump, 8 times a day, across many different media environments.
I do agree that that is the biggest issue in both DNC and RNC though. There's been a clear divide between what DNC wants to run and what the actual democrats want out of the party. Polls suggest from the latter that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is one of the biggest role models of a proper opponent in 2028, but it's been clear the DNC has been fighting against that for almost a decade now, for a variety of reasons.
RNC has a similar issue, once Trump is gone. There's already cracks forming in various different interests of republicans, but they all loosely rally around Trump. If/when Trump kicks the bucket, I don't see who can hold that cult of personality. Vance has very low charisma, and Mike Johnson seems too establishment (for voters that very much voted against establishment). I don't really see a protégé that is carrying whatever that MAGA mindset people want out of the movement.
There's a pretty easy way to reconcile this - run a fair primary election. Rigging it against Sanders in 2016, and not running one at all in 2024, both expectedly led to disaster. You're never gonna win if you don't even have the full support of your own party.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presid...
No clue who they'll run with. Americans have been pretty clear that women are still second-class citizens and should not attempt to reach too high, but hopefully it'll at least be someone a few decades younger.
Basically, the democrats want fighters. We're well past bi-partisan tasks where we should just faciliate any kind of bill that comes up. Because very few are reasonable.
Trump called and got Jan 6th.
Democrats called and nobody could be bothered to show up to vote.
I'm sure Democrats can complain about their Senators in the same language.
The Direct File system was live more than a year ago, I thought: https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/directfile/
…or did you mean “eventually doomed” rather than “doomed to not ship at all”?
> The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law in August 2022.1 Section 10301(1)(B) of the IRS provided the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with $15 million to establish a task force to design an IRS-run, free direct electronic filing (e-file) system commonly referred to as “Direct File” ...
https://www.tigta.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2025-03/20...
You're bringing up an unrelated law that didn't even exist at the time of the launch of Direct File in early 2024.
It's also fun that, because this is from the US, they can't just use CC0, but instead need to clarify that this must be public domain, separately from the worldwide CC0.
Less snarkily, I do wonder about the discrepancy there.
Creative Commons is a worldwide organization, not a jurisdiction-specfic organization. Creative Commons does not have the authority to harmonize laws worldwide.
PS: AFAIK, however, Authorship rights are different from Copyright, and cannot be given/passed as Copyrights, at least in US.
Also it's important to remember these works are not in the public domain because someone declared them to be, they are simply because they are works carried out by the US government. Similar to how copyright is automatic, it's not applied only when you put the copyright symbol, that's just informational.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YAML 452 158 693 161655
JSON 396 1 0 155975
JavaScript 7 21 4513 123150
TypeScript 741 7913 19645 80869
XML 66 5208 1006 60935
Java 725 7380 2283 37863
Scala 272 3275 1423 25395
CSV 146 0 0 25335
Markdown 86 5019 21 9228
SVG 12 5 1749 9130
HTML 39 52 4 4073
Maven 16 61 87 1963
SCSS 47 380 85 1662
Scheme 5 121 0 864
Python 13 185 96 668
Bourne Shell 17 94 127 541
DOS Batch 2 30 0 268
CSS 1 17 0 81
Properties 9 0 24 60
Text 3 1 0 35
TOML 1 6 0 26
Dockerfile 1 8 1 19
INI 1 0 0 7
SQL 4 0 0 5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM: 3062 29935 31757 699807
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Listing every config language and a few lines of CI or whatever scripts shit is misleading.
I see nothing other than typical boring enterprise/big gov crap here (which is fine, and expected).
but the actual tax definitions that deal with facts and derived calculation are here: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/main/direct-f...
See for example the standard deduction and tax rate calculations https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f... https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
I imagine these are based on the MeF (Modernized e-File) schemas because the system needs to transform the input data into XML MeF schemas to submit electronically to the MeF system (See https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/modernized-e-file-mef-s...)
[1] https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f... [2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-14-41.pdf
0: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/main/docs/des...
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/9dd76a786ea69...
Or if you’re in the business of selling extremely wide aspect ratio monitors.
After staring at code for 12 hours a day for a few decades my zoom is 125% by default.
The giveaway is the Mono<T> return type.
I see the most of it stems from reactive-style programming (reactor.core.publisher.Mono).
Maybe they just tried to fit into one screen? Anyway I'd ask to simplify it, if I was a their team lead.
My experience with pretty much any Java framework ... It's sad because I do think (especially since Java 8) that Java is a great language for many things. But the community as this insane tendency to create incredibly convoluted pattern-on-top-of-pattern tooling.
But no, I don't think this would faze most Java devs. It's ugly and bad practice, but more or less acceptable depending on personal taste. It works, at least.
Point of interest: LLMs tend to go too far in the opposite direction with code like this. They will break everything apart into functions or classes, even trivial one-line lambdas. I find that even more obnoxious than the monstrosity you linked.
I dislike Java but if it can get me back to the On Error Resume Next days I might reconsider.
Just another shitty Java middleware that never amounted to anything, 200000 lines of code that don't express even a handful of ideas.
The C# query syntax
from x in xs
from y in GetYs(x)
from z in GetZs(y) ...
xs.SelectMany(x => GetYs(x).SelectMany(y => GetZs(y).SelectMany(z => ...)))
So since there is monadic Scala code elsewhere in the project, I wonder if this is a result of someone thinking in Scala and translating it into Java in their head.
Guys I knew it
If the Biden administration wanted to break the tax software oligopoly, they should have focused on making the government’s own interfaces open.
I doubt contributions are welcome
It is pre-filled with the known incomes so for the best majority of people filling their taxes is a 1 minute exercise.
This also helps, I guess, to have the taxes flow in.
additionally, the US has (one of?) the most complex tax systems in the world. In part b/c most of it is carve outs...on behalf of various lobbyist groups / catering to specific voting blocks.
The majority of the population of the US claims the standard deduction and has all their income in the form of W2 or 1099 which is reported to the IRS by the employer. Those people can be served by a return free filing system.
The minority which have more complicated taxes can still file like they do today. But even adding on investment income and housing related deductions the IRS likely has enough information to calculate what is owed.
We shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of better. I know you weren’t arguing that point but just because the tax code is complex doesn’t mean it is complex for everyone’s situation
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtyyMPczy6nuj_QR4Jy4J8sf8f3...
Ask anyone in the EU who has lived in one country and earned a paycheck from a different one.
Anyways, give it time, the EU is currently working to make it's tax system more complicated to solve some of the long standing continental issues, and to make the EU system more like the US one.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
Secondly, there is the issue of State / Local taxes - the IRS only receives federal tax data making it hard to automatically fill out the whole tax return since efiling products tend to file federal / state taxes together.
This year, direct file allowed people to import their W2s and 1099-INTs automatically based on the information the IRS had: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
When can we have "code is law"? Write the code as source of truth and generate the law from it.
> Not all source code, documentation and metadata used in the development of Direct File is included in this repository. Specifically, any code or data that is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Federal Tax Information (FTI), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), or source code developed for National Security Systems (NSS), as defined in 40 U.S.C. § 11103, is exempt. Due to these restrictions, certain pieces of functionality have been removed or rewritten.
Very curious about what these pieces are that were removed
Presumably, any Intuit competitors will be given a 10 year headstart worth many millions, maybe billions?
I'm doing it all by hand because I'm tired of going through the 'free' apps and entering in all my details, and when I get ready to file it end up being hundreds of dollars to file since the other forms (extra 1040 schedules, 2555, etc) are not included.
also, you need to submit selfies and have a usa sim card from specific providers.
I own stocks, all I had to do was fill in the forms on freetaxusa.com based on the forms the brokerage gave me. Just look for non zero fields on the brokerage forms, and fill out the matching box.
If you mean something more sophisticated tax-wise, then I'm sure direct file wouldn't support it either?
Regarding the sim card, I assume that's about two factor codes? IIRC I always logged in through a code received by email.
It's too bad the current Administration is going to kill DirectFile and has fired all the people who were working on it.
Saying Goodbye - https://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/
>But as I told the team as the end closed in, “We took a pipedream, and made it a policy choice.” No one can claim with a straight face that Direct File is impossible anymore; bringing it back requires only that our elected leaders make a different choice.
>What I mourn the most, though, is the dissolution of the team, the disregard for the vast impact they were poised and eager to deliver. The team itself is what I am proudest of from my time working on Direct File. Their manic dedication to the mission. The care they consistently took to get it right. The trust and love they had for each other.
To the best of my knowledge, the tax filer is responsible for knowing the law, which includes amendments made almost every Congressional session, the court rulings upon both of those things, the judicial meaning of the English words used in all that corpus, and then one can get into the pdfs and their printing and mailing. Or all of those lawyers and enrolled agents can be rented at tax time in order to outsource some of the liability, and thus that's how we end up with the current cesspool of a system we have
In fact, the tax forms and accompanying instructions are written at a level that anyone with a high school education should be able to understand. Examples are often included, along with call-outs for "Tips" and "Caution" to highlight key points.
Further, there are dozens of publications that go into more detail and cover probably 90% or more of all the scenarios one would encounter. Pub 17 in particular is a beginning-to-end handbook that covers Form 1040 and the common forms/schedules and the entire filing process, with references to other pubs when appropriate, again all written at a high-school level.
These are available in both PDF and HTML formats. Recall that electronic filing has only been around for a few decades, so prior to that everyone used to fill and file on paper The IRS has long history of providing the necessary instructions to do so at a level accessible to the vast majority of users.
It is also a fact that the tax software providers use these same instructions and publications as the specifications that their software must meet. Literally, they will hold up release of various forms for filing using their software until the IRS finalizes the accompanying form instructions.
If you have a problem with that, build a robust appeal process. Essentially what we have now is an appeal process for every single person.
hydrogen7800•1d ago
xhevahir•1d ago
glookler•1d ago
bee_rider•1d ago
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•13h ago
mrguyorama•13h ago
Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.
glookler•8h ago
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•1d ago
"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•1d ago
kccqzy•1d ago
gleenn•1d ago
jandrese•1d ago
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!
andylynch•1d ago
Legislation very often has a bunch of them at the back, referred to from the main text.
PaulDavisThe1st•1d ago
robertlagrant•16h ago
More fundamentally: how are the citizens who pay the salaries of the people writing the rules supposed to handle a situation like that?
parineum•15h ago
Now I'm trying to remember how long ago I got my panels installed...
raverbashing•1d ago
However, it is most likely that the people claiming EITC are the least likely to understand the information there
onlyrealcuzzo•20h ago
yencabulator•13h ago
It's almost as if Republicans weren't actually pushing for a smaller, cheaper, government.
HPsquared•1d ago
nitwit005•1d ago
gowld•1d ago
braebo•1d ago
acdha•1d ago
tombert•1d ago
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.
throw678937•1d ago
tombert•1d ago
PopAlongKid•1d ago
You mistakenly assume that simply knowing what is on the 1099-B form is sufficient to determine your tax on the gain. They don't know if you are married or single or head of household (filing status) in the current tax year. They don't know what some of your itemized deductions and other income not reported to them might be (which in turn, along with filing status, determines what marginal tax bracket you are in). They don't know if you are actually just a nominee for someone else's income. These are just a few examples. They don't know any of this stuff until you tell them by filing your complete return.
xp84•1d ago
I think you're misinterpreting the GP's point. Clearly, at least in our current system, it is essential to tell the IRS the parts of the return that they don't already know such as what are your expenses, deductions, marital status, etc.
But the absurd thing is that the capture of the IRS by the paid tax prep scammers has prevented them from simply showing you what's on your tax transcripts and having you click "Agree" or "Modify" for each one. Instead, you get your own copy of the 1099-B, 1099-DIV, 1099-INTs, and are administered a pointless "honesty test" to see if you'll type in the same numbers they have, or be automatically punished.
Obviously, Direct File was ideally situated to offer this feature since IRS has the data themselves, and simply populating the numbers is a highly efficient way of ingesting the data into your return.
rsti0000•1d ago
Under Biden, the IRS tried to make w2s and 1099s available. If you log into the IRS website with your information, you can download the w2s and 1099s the Service has in your name.
Antitax activists have fought these steps every step of the way because the less annoying tax filing is, the less people will buy their antitax arguments.
The IRS isn’t captured by these predatory tax preparers, Congress is. The IRS can’t do a lot on data without Congress specifically authorizing it. And the Republican Party is in bed with the antitax activists who are in bed with the tax preparation companies.
sokoloff•21h ago
Use Form 4506-T to request them.
tombert•1d ago
sokoloff•21h ago
(They can detect that you had a sale for which they got a 1099-B but you didn’t list on your Schedule D. That doesn’t mean they have enough information to fix it.)
tombert•18h ago
acdha•1d ago
icedchai•1d ago
tombert•1d ago
tekla•22h ago
yencabulator•13h ago
> It takes an average American taxpayer 11-13 hours to prepare their taxes, according to the IRS.
tombert•7h ago
I'm not doing anything clever to try and lower my tax burden, it's an extremely straightforward "run it through tax software" process, and it still took me two hours.
mrguyorama•13h ago
There are two reasons. 1) Because Intuit owns enough reps to keep their business existing. 2) They have a fairly easy time doing that because the Republican party explicitly believes that taxes should be painful to discourage America from having functioning taxes.
All the "IRS might not know everything about you" is distraction. That's not a problem in any of the countries that have no trouble sending you a preliminary document for you to amend or accept. It's FUD.
For a long time the IRS was literally barred from doing what TurboTax does.
bee_rider•1d ago
sitkack•1d ago
You pay the bill they send you, you are done.
fanatic2pope•1d ago
actionfromafar•1d ago
OskarS•23h ago
I have a reasonably simple personal economy and it takes me all of five minutes to file my taxes in Sweden. My parents have a much more complicated setup (small private business, own a couple of properties, several deductions, etc.) and it basically is pretty straight-forward for them as well, certainly they don't need an accountant.
TurboTax, Intuit and anti-tax Republicans has really fucked with the US expectation of how complicated taxes needs to be.
tekla•22h ago
raverbashing•21h ago
Yes, keep telling yourself they don't (for what it matters)
In fact if you get a W2 the IRS already have it
mauvehaus•21h ago
Just think what someone with a gazillion dollars, some trusts, and "charitable foundations" could do.
tl•20h ago
raverbashing•19h ago
But if by law something needs to be known by the government: just go for it
A silly analogy: your medical info is private, but it's in your best interest that a condition like 'diabetic' or 'allergic to something' have a lower level of privacy
bee_rider•15h ago
> But if by law something needs to be known by the government: just go for it
This seems a bit flipped, the only reason something needs to be provided to the government “by law” is that we’ve passed a law that says it needs to be. That it is required by law is not a reason for it being required of course, that’s circular. The reason the law was passed is because we decided it was in the public interest for the government to collect that data.
If we decided it was in the public interest to collect more income info about wealthy people, then we could make that required by law. I think the comment you responded to is suggesting that we should change what is required by law.
Your analogy is better. There’s a reason you might be ok with less privacy there.
yencabulator•13h ago
robertlagrant•16h ago
Every company has to file tax returns and pay employee taxes already, and employs accountants and finance people for that purpose.
fitsumbelay•1d ago
freeone3000•1d ago
yencabulator•13h ago
mystified5016•1d ago
Imagine pair programming with a tax lawyer. I'd rather eat my own hands.
rsti0000•1d ago
NoahZuniga•1d ago
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.
bbarnett•18h ago
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•14h ago
yencabulator•13h ago
NoahZuniga•6h ago
sowbug•17h ago
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•16h ago
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•16h ago
ted_dunning•15h ago
Or a unit test that determines whether the discussion during a meal with a customer was "substantially about business matters".
yencabulator•13h ago
Anything more complex is an input to the system, the system can still be tested.