I just looked up https://directfile.irs.gov/. While it says closed, the testimonies on this site speak to how easy the filing was. Almost feels like it is intentional to keep rest of the site as is with a small banner on top announcing the closure, as a way to hint at this stupid move by the administration.
Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
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Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#72Why won't a non-profit pick up the open-source code they released and modify it for 2026?
Everybody seems to care about this issue so much, so this feels like an extremely high-impact thing to do.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#73Ok, fine, I’ll use TurboTax. I live and work abroad and Turbotax requires a US billing address to pay the fee of using Turbotax. :facepalm All the other self-service options do not work and I’m not sure if the risk is worth it to file it myself. To my fellow Expats, what are you doing?
If your tax situation isn't too complicated, it actually isn't too hard to fill out the forms yourself[1]. But if you are living abroad, unfortunately your tax situation probably isn't that simple.
[1]: Although I find it incredibly frustrating the lengths they go to to avoid negative numbers on the forms.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used the fillable forms before; the problem is that to fill them out with confidence - to even know with confidence which ones you should be filling out - requires more knowledge of tax law than the average person can reasonably be expected to possess. Now, the various self-filing software products also feel a lot like guessing, but at least they walk you through which guesses are mostly likely to be correct and…
Unless you have a unreasonably complicated return, you need absolutely no knowledge of tax law. It's all just "take the number from box X on form A and write it in box Y of form B."
Yes. I've used Free filllable forms several times. For basic tax situations, and even mildly complex ones, the problem isn't so much that it is hard as that it is very tedious.
It involves reading a lot of instructions, with many references to other documents and other sections. It involves copying a lot of numbers from one place to another, and doing basic math on them to get a new one.
It could be improved a lot just by automatically calculating more fields, and adding more of the "worksheets" that are in the instructions into the forms so it can calculate those for you.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe lobbyists should be punished by having their skin fully tattooed blue like smurfs. This way, you’d have to really be into lobbying to suffer the tattoo pain and permanent branding.
Or voters should take some civic responsibility and stop voting for corrupt politicians. Americans seem to be either unable to make their own decisions without paid advertising to direct them or they're afraid of "wasting" their vote on candidates that didn't spend enough on advertising.
this is just a more abstract "bootstraps" argument. schooling in this country has been systematically attacked and deconstructed, and as the burger reich's leader says, "i love the poorly educated". this is not "dum timmy votes for dum thing" it's "countless $ and effort and man hours have been devoted to making the american populace dumber"
Why? look at any polling breakdown for how the educated vote vs the uneducated.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#76Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
Which is basically how it works here too. If you just have W-2 income from an employer it takes less than 10 minutes to fill out the form. Sure, the system you mention is more convenient, but the difference is minimal.
The system he mentioned is usually equally simple for self-employed.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#77Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#78Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
Remember, Americans have to file taxes separately to the State and Federal government. The Federal government has little authority to dictate State taxes. The paperwork is in part a coordination problem between the State and Federal governments.
Basic taxes are trivial in the US if you just work to live, it is essentially one page. However, there is an extremely long and fat tail where the government has no way of knowing the correct details to compute your taxes. There are myriad subsidies and offsets that have to be accounted for, many of which depend on what State you live in.
If you earn a lot of money, like the tech people that frequent this website, you are much more likely to find yourself in that fat tail. It can become esoteric quite quickly. The Federal tax code has to accommodate the completely independent tax codes of all 50 States in a reasonable way.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#79Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
Doesn't America have uniquely complicated tax that requires you to keep all your receipts to claim all sorts of confusing deductions? How can the IRS know what you spent your income on if you don't tell them? I've had the misfortune of having to fill in a W8-BEN-E form [1] and the first time, I just gave up and refused to work with the client because it was too complicated. The 2nd time, I got an LLM to tell me how t…
For a truly uniquely complicated tax system please move to Germany.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#80Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
Remember, Americans have to file taxes separately to the State and Federal government. The Federal government has little authority to dictate State taxes. The paperwork is in part a coordination problem between the State and Federal governments. Basic taxes are trivial in the US if you just work to live, it is essentially one page. However, there is an extremely long and fat tail where the government has no way of kn…
It is not that complex. RSU's or options are pretty straightforward.
Deductions can get esoteric if you sold a bunch of stock. Even then, not that bad.