Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Tax Software

ctskennerton.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 265 posts

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#151

Post by bregma »

xivzgrev wrote: post #19

I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts. Noble, yes. Short lived, yes. It’s relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem comes from all. The. Edge. Cases. 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple states? 3) what if i… And on and on. And it’s not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of updates…

I can't believe so many commenters here are crying out for a nannier nanny state where all of their financial transactions are monitored by the government and once a year they have to sign a paper agreeing that the government has watched them correctly.

That flies in hte face of the usual comment torrent decrying centralized spying from any agency, government or otherwise.

In the 40 or so years I have been doing taxes I have not once seen the amount deducted as taxes match the amount owed. After various deductions (retirement savings, medical expenses, charitable donations, political contributions, governmental program incentives, etc) and jurisdictional disagreements (employer in one province, residence in another), I and those I do taxes for always get money coming back.

Requiring every financial (and otherwise) transaction I undertake to be registered with some central government authority to they can (in theory) correctly prefill my tax forms is anathema. Be careful what you wish for you might just get it.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#152

Post by diegocg »

j_m_b wrote: post #21
3gg wrote: post #10

The real problem here is that Intuit and other companies lobby millions to maintain their status quo. The right thing to do would be to put every single dollar spent on these corporations into a government program that develops this kind of software or even does the taxes for you (this already exists in many countries in the EU.) Instead, in the US, you pay for Turbotax, they make a profit out if it, and then they us…

The US government is always honest and most assuredly will make their software with the end user in mind. Combined with the excellent customer support offered by the IRS and the US government's proven track record in creating stable software used by millions, this would be the best solution.

In Spain the tax filling software provided by the government was migrated to a JavaScript browser based interface years ago (it was a Java app before).

The interface is responsive. I literally can send my taxes while I shit. The biggest hurdle is that the day the tax season starts servers can't deal with the load (because apparently everyone wants to be Ned Flanders and file their taxes the first day).

Thanks to the national ID e-card (which does have a chip with a private key and a certificate signed by the government's certificate authority) I don't even need a login/password to enter the tax agency web site, the card proves my identity.

This is not some advanced e-government shit, it's routine and every advanced country is expected to have it (just like universal healthcare, clean water or paved roads). Even development countries are starting to have these kind of web services.

At this point I suspect some people get paid to spread bullshit like this.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#153

Post by ineedasername »

wahern wrote: post #86
ineedasername wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disruption could also come from tax reform. Some countries don't make you figure out things on your own: That's a bit like making a shopper put in the correct prices on each item they're buying and penalizing then for mistakes. A "Price is Right" game-show version of a tax filing system. Some other countries just tell you where you stand because for the vast majority of people a standard filing is all that's required…

> Some countries don't make you figure out things on your own: That's a bit like making a shopper put in the correct prices on each item they're buying and penalizing then for mistakes. A "Price is Right" game-show version of a tax filing system. The U.S. doesn't make you do this, either. Most people don't itemize deductions. You just plug in the data from your W-2. The percentage of people itemizing was 30%, but wit…

Even plugging in your data from a w-2 can be an intimidating process with a a lot of conditionals and a few referals to other forms where you might need to give more information. In turn, those forms may reference still more forms, along with explanatory documents to further define the terms used and provide practical examples. A person may not know that supplemental forms aren't required for their situation until they have gone down that rabbit hole.

As for itemizing, again, you may not know if you should itemize or not until you actually go through the process and see where the numbers fall.

Meanwhile the IRS is held out as a boogey man who will ruin your life financially if you get something wrong.

For most here on HN who deal with interlocking blocks of logic, tech documentation, etc? It's fine, and probably for a plenty of other people too. For a very large number of people though, it's the common paradox that it's only easy once once you already know what you're doing. And for a few weeks/months a year the tax prep industry works hard to convince people it's not something they should try to navigate on their own, and if they do then they're a sucker throwing away refund money because of hidden secret tricks to get more refund money back.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#154

Post by [deleted] »

syshum wrote: post #143
cranekam wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just plug in the data from your W-2. This is still a lot more work than in many countries, and you still need to either fill in a paper 1040 (plus state taxes where appropriate, and some of those (cough CA) are far from simple), use tax prep software, or someone like H&R Block. In the UK, if you're in the majority of people who have one job and straightforward finances (e.g. not renting property, no CGT, etc) y…

I am 100% opposed to this model. I am even opposed to Automatic Deductions People should have some "skin" in the game of taxation, if we allow the process to become seamless overtaxation becomes a real problem. Even today people do not treat their Gross income as their income, they look at net. This is the wrong way to look at it. I believe people should have to physically pay the government every month just like you…

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#155

Post by elcomet »

laurencerowe wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they keep in touch with our version of the IRS): https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france The way we got this is interestingly twisted. French citizens requested the software used by the administration, and they managed to get it! But, it was written in Mlang, a proprietary language created by the fr…

This is great. Do most French people need to file tax returns? When I lived in Britain I only needed to file when I was self-employed and when I worked in Norway I got sent a pre-filled tax return. Now living in the US I need to file every year (both state and federally) even as a regular employee with all my income reported already reported to the government. It all seems to be an absurd charade. Attempts to reduce…

French employees also get a pre-filled tax return, they just need to check that it is correct.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#156

Post by UncleMeat »

zakpatterson wrote: post #64
xivzgrev wrote: post #19

I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts. Noble, yes. Short lived, yes. It’s relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem comes from all. The. Edge. Cases. 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple states? 3) what if i… And on and on. And it’s not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of updates…

Open source can solve this problem. Any service you choose might be missing your edge case. But if you can see all the code and figure out where to plug in your edge case, then you can contribute it for all users in the future to enjoy. We've already seen people show up and implement features we hadn't researched yet. I encourage you to check it out.

The consequences of botching it are high, so taking commits from external contributors requires detailed and time consuming reviews.

Further, people don't know what the edge cases actually are at scale. If I go do my taxes and it doesn't account for some weird thing, I simply don't know that this weird thing even exists in the first place to justify a PR to the tax service.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#157

Post by UncleMeat »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #120
drstewart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of people in the US could fill out their taxes by hand in less than 5 minutes. It's Yes, the IRS could do even this for you, but there's a myth that US taxes are always monstrously complicated that everyone likes to perpetuate: 1) The tax companies like it because it keeps people scared of doing it themselves 2) Tax reform advocates like it because it's they can cluck and shake their head at the corrupt governmen…

US tax laws are monstrously complicated. There’s a couple thousand pages of tax code, along with close to 10,000 pages of IRS regulations, that you won’t understand adequately unless you’ve also studied the many tens of thousands of pages of related case law. There is no single person alive who fully understands US tax laws, and even a well resourced team of people likely won’t when combined. It’s possible to underst…

There is a ton of tax code, but if you have W2 income in one state and only contributed to a 401k then virtually none of those pages of laws apply to you. Most people fall into this category.

Genuine errors on your taxes are also not criminal offenses.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#158

Post by OneTimePetes »

xivzgrev wrote: post #19

I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts. Noble, yes. Short lived, yes. It’s relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem comes from all. The. Edge. Cases. 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple states? 3) what if i… And on and on. And it’s not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of updates…

So what is actually needed, is to transfer law into a computer parse-able syntax, so that software can automatically update itself?

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#159

Post by Jugurtha »

laurencerowe wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they keep in touch with our version of the IRS): https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france The way we got this is interestingly twisted. French citizens requested the software used by the administration, and they managed to get it! But, it was written in Mlang, a proprietary language created by the fr…

This is great. Do most French people need to file tax returns? When I lived in Britain I only needed to file when I was self-employed and when I worked in Norway I got sent a pre-filled tax return. Now living in the US I need to file every year (both state and federally) even as a regular employee with all my income reported already reported to the government. It all seems to be an absurd charade. Attempts to reduce…

In Algeria, we have "retenue à la source". Taxes are withheld and paid by the company on behalf of the employee, so you don't need to do any taxes. The company takes care of social Security payment and taxes, and it appears in the tax returns of the company, and the employee's pay stubs. The organization's accountant or accounting firm takes care of it.

You don't interact with the revenue service as an employee, or fill out forms, or something.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#160

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

laurencerowe wrote: post #147
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they keep in touch with our version of the IRS): https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france The way we got this is interestingly twisted. French citizens requested the software used by the administration, and they managed to get it! But, it was written in Mlang, a proprietary language created by the fr…

This is great. Do most French people need to file tax returns? When I lived in Britain I only needed to file when I was self-employed and when I worked in Norway I got sent a pre-filled tax return. Now living in the US I need to file every year (both state and federally) even as a regular employee with all my income reported already reported to the government. It all seems to be an absurd charade. Attempts to reduce…

It's true that tax filing companies lobby to prevent improvements to the tax filing system in the US, but this is also aided by political parties that argue against things like taxation in the first place, which is why there is no bipartisan support to address this issue.

Keeping taxes hard to pay is an important carrot in keeping the public mad about having to pay them in the first place. It's governance through dark patterns.

Post reply on HN