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Open Source Tax Software

ctskennerton.github.io

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Re: Open Source Tax Software

#171

Post by mkr-hn »

bregma wrote: post #151
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 taxe…

The IRS already gets this information. They'll get even more with the changes to 1099-k reporting for transactions made next year.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#172

Post by danShumway »

bregma wrote: post #151
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 taxe…

Nobody here is asking for that.

I don't know if you're just not aware of this, or what, but most of the data on your taxes is stuff that already gets reported to the government. There's no reason for consumers to fill out a W2 every year, the government as it exists today already has that data. The same is the case for a lot of investment information, it already gets reported to the IRS today.

You don't need to build an expanded government surveillance program for the IRS to stop requiring filers to fill in information that the government already has. This has nothing to do with having a "nanny state", and everything to do with a coordinated campaign from bad-faith actors like Intuit to try and pretend that it's pro-freedom or pro-privacy or some crud to act like the government doesn't already have your W2.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#173

Post by nwatson »

Jugurtha wrote: post #159
laurencerowe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

In the U.S. this "withholding" happens as well. Regular employee paychecks already lose a chunk of nominal income attributed to various buckets, federal and state and maybe local level. Toward the beginning of the next year comes the grand reconciliation though, where what you "really owe" gets computed, only roughly matching what already is withheld. There are so many rules, exclusions, exceptions, additions. They individually make some sense, or did at some point, but are very confusing, with implications that sometimes stretch over many years.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#174

Post by ghaff »

hyperpallium2 wrote: post #53
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…

> It takes an army to build and maintain Perfect for open source - if decomposable, so each issue can be dealt with in isolation (or many can). e.g. using a "plug-in" architecture of some kind. And somehow recruit non-dev folk - if you go to the trouble to understand some specific tax point, you often would like to share it, and also record it in some "easy to use" form, for next time (and a starting point for amendm…

>Perfect for open source

Not really.

The software as a whole needs to be verified across a wide range of everchanging rules, some of which are going to be a judgement call even among experienced accountants.

Why would people be interested in working on this project? It certainly doesn't break any new ground. It's just a long and ongoing grind to implement tax code rules. If for some reason, I have a lifelong ambition to work on accounting software, I'm sure Intuit, SAP, and Oracle pay reasonably well.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#175

Post by xyzelement »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #160
laurencerowe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dar…

> 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.

I am pretty sure the reason most people are mad about having to pay taxes is the thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of dollars of their income that is taken from them.

On the high level, I always felt fortunate that I was in position to have to pay a lot of taxes. But it's pretty ridiculous. Case in point, we just bought a small, 100 year old house on a tiny lot. New York State didn't hesitate charging us a "mansion tax" on it. Believe me, it's no mansion. While there's a limit to how mad I am about that, it's not the paperwork that's annoying me.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#176

Post by lbriner »

ajdlinux wrote: post #82
vimsee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a kind of XY problem that could be solved theoretically by agreeing on a more streamlined tax-regulation. It will take away the ability to fine tune tax deducts and so forth, but in return we can more easily design software to handle our taxes. I find that not having this automated nowadays with the advancement in computing resources that we have at disposal today is surprising.

Or you could just have the government itself develop the software in tandem with the tax regulations. Obviously, even that would still be easier and cheaper with a less complex tax code, but in this thread we're talking about "open source tax software" that shouldn't even really need to exist when the government could just provide a fully functional web portal where the corner cases have been tested exhaustively by t…

This has to be the most sensible thing. The UK used to say that "tax doesn't have to be taxing", very pithy but then I tried to make a zero return for a dormant company and had to use some horrific software from the HMRC (tax office), which was some weird XML thing that was impossible to understand.

If the government had to make the software we all had to use, as well as it being free, it would force the government to consider the cost of modifications when they decide in their infinite wisdom that some new tax-break should be created.

Inertia can be good to slow-down knee-jerk politics.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#178

Post by lbriner »

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.

I think this only makes sense to an outsider dev who thinks everything is relatively easy. Tax and accounting is definitely not.

What happens if you fall under two different tax-breaks or if a payment was taken on a certain date which falls before or after a cut-off point? A lot of complexity, that the developers could solve but will not necessarily know how to handle. At least when you submit this to the relevant tax authority, they can spot alarms like this and decide in a reactionary way how to handle it, adjusting tax codes or providing rebates.

There are just way too many things that change too quickly.

That said, I am all for simplification but then you wouldn't need open-source software, you could just do it in a spreadsheet ;-)

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#179

Post by adabyron »

umeshunni wrote: post #58
junar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story of ReadyReturn in California is a pretty clear example. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/521132960

Aha, here's the actual interesting bit: The intensity of industry opposition to CalFile has not gone unnoticed in Washington, D.C. In February, IRS commissioner Mark Everson told Congress that he was reluctant to set up an IRS direct e-file system in part because of the bruising battle he witnessed in California...And that leaves federal taxpayers with little prospect of a direct-to-government e-filing system anytime…

I would be happy if there was just a place to upload the form to online. No fancy software needed. I have to mail my Quarterly 941 every quarter or pay some overpriced software to do it - https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-941

I think the popular counter argument is worth knowing. The TurboTaxes of the world argue that if the Government just sent you a pre-filled out form they could mess up many of them & you would possibly overpay if you didn't do your due diligence. This tends to get support from those who like to argue in favor of ideas such as "smaller govt" & "govt is inefficient compared to businesses where the capitalism market will pick the winners". Obviously both of these ideas are highly controversial.

Re: Open Source Tax Software

#180

Post by nn3 »

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…

Excel1040 has been around for quite some time, long enough to already have long crossed the "short lived" threshold.

It avoids the state problem by not supporting states at all.

It's done by a single retired person. I always donate a few bucks and I suspect he's making enough off the donations for it to be worthwhile for him.

But yes eventually it might be abandoned if he doesn't find some successor, but so far it's very alive.

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