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Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted (github.com)

244 points by elijahwright_ ↗ HN
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season

the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/

10 comments

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nxobject
Thanks so much for keeping this going, and for the late 18F for open-sourcing these implementations... I hope there's a way we can institutionalize your efforts.

As a side note, when the documentation page is viewed in a dark mode browser, I see black text on black background (https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/).

onetom
i'm not from the US, but i did work on forms related to government workflows.

it bugged me for a long time why a person can't store facts about themselves and let some software figure out which of those facts are needed for filling out any form, which needs the usual personal facts.

then one can review the required facts and decide which ones are they willing to share.

in fact governments could even standardize the kind of info they are dealing with usually and when a citizen wants the government to do something, instead of filling out forms, they could provide their own, self-hosted fact db, run the govt's query and provide the results (after review)

1oooqooq
never understood exactly what is the code they released. is it just the from filler that only works for people with a single w2 and no stocks etc?
EPWN3D
Would absolutely love a command line. Maybe if I ever get free time and feel like dusting off my Java.
hermannj314
For what it is worth, the Big Beautiful Bill contains this gem...

As soon as practicable, and not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure that the Internal Revenue Service Direct File program has been terminated.

(This is the text of the bill on the website as of the time I posted this, it can change or be wrong now.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...)

Evidlo
That section was just removed.
citizenpaul
That is really awesome, which I could give more upvotes. I hope you can keep it running and get some support. (sry i've made it a life mission to avoid javascript when possible)

It really is embarrassing how ineffective and useless the US gov has become.

sciencesama
May be feed this to ai to teach us how to reduce taxes !!