Was the US so behind that they didn't have a way to file taxes online for free?
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
1492 points (99.7% liked)
Technology
70996 readers
3682 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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
Unfortunately yes
Not behind, ahead. Just you wait.
Uh no … the US is behind on this and payment platforms and invoice creation and a ton of other shir
I'm not sure you got what I meant, which was that the US may end up dragging others in its wake. Time will tell. I just know it's not just the US that has seen a rise in right wing politics.
And so, yeah, I said it kind of tongue in cheek, but I'm concerned it's the start of a trend. But hey, maybe there's an asteroid inbound.
Here he just let the coalition fall
Can you elaborate a bit, as far as where here is and what coalition? I have ideas but I don't wanna make assumptions. And obviously that's is you feel comfortable doing so, not trying to blow you up. But I'm interested in what's happening elsewhere you know? And I am just not sure I trust the news.
In NL Geert Wilders let the coalition fall but it was one of the worst coalitions we have had
Yes, thanks to the powerful lobby from Turbotax.
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.
Don't worry, there will always be an IRS for us plebes.
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.”"
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!
only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.
load more comments
(10 replies)
Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke
because its the internet in 2025 and we simply cannot tell anymore
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(13 replies)
load more comments
(41 replies)
It's licensed under CC0 to anyone wondering. BSD 0-Clause would probably be better but still fantastic.
CC0 is a horrible thing to use for software. It seems great, but it specifically does not give patent rights. Compare that to MIT which implicitly does so. CC0 specifically says it does not.
The US government doesn't (to my knowledge at least) have copyright protections so MIT wouldn't be possible. BSD 0-Clause is just better because e.g. Austria doesn't allow you to cede copyright to the public domain and CC0 directly mentions the public domain in the terms of the license.
Interesting, SPDX does not list 0BSD as FSF approved, but FSF does approve it. This isn't the first problem I've seen with SPDX's list. They say CC0 is FSF approved but FSF only says it is approved for things besides code.
load more comments
(4 replies)
What happened to the title of this?? Jeez
“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.
They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)
But most of those aren't used as verbs here.
right, but you can only tell what's used as a verb after you've parsed it.
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
I love id.me, I'm so glad I had to give my facial data to them to collect unemployment insurance!
Guess that means they don't want your money! Woo! (this is not legal advice, pay your taxes)
Hurry up and clone that ASAP, this is gonna get taken down once DOGE realizes what it is
More likely they'll just turn off or unpublish the API that it depends on.
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
TurboTax owned buy intuit, part of H&R block who has partnered with credit karma. Everything is a monopoly now
I'm pretty sure intuit and h&r block are competitors, not the same compamy.
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
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
load more comments
(4 replies)
Suck a bag of dicks, TurboTax
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.
view more: next ›