Really enjoyed the multi-part/multi-file tutorial for the fact-graph, a seemingly core component that I saw referenced in a couple places.
> Take a look at [Form 1040][1]. Line 12c asks the taxpayer to add lines 12a and 12b. This is a common pattern on tax forms. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
> There is a relationship betwen lines 12a, 12b, and 12c. In order to know what should be entered in 12c, we need to first know the values of 12a and 12b.
> This pattern might remind you of a spreadsheet. If we were to transcribe Form 1040 into Excel, we might imagine that line 12c would be a formula like =SUM(Line12A,Line12B). Excel spreadsheets are _declarative_, which is to say we define the relationships between cells using formulas, but we leave it up to Excel to determine how to solve the spreadsheet.
Always great seeing this high quality work coming out of government. Sad to see it being shut down.
unsnap_biceps · 1d ago
I know a number of people who are now using https://www.freetaxusa.com/ to file their taxes for free, but I've been hesitant to. Does anyone know offhand if they're actually trustworthy?
agarren · 1d ago
I’ve used them for probably the better part of a decade. I’ve never had any issues, they’re pretty inexpensive, they e-file by default and you get a notification when state and fed are accepted. The wizard is easy to follow and explanations are available. They have bells and whistles like audit protection, that seem reasonable but that I’ve largely avoided.
The name might seem a little sketchy, but it’s a legit service. I don’t know about “free” - I’ve always ended up paying to file at least one of state or federal, I don’t recall, but not pricy.
(Edit - looking closer, I’ve been using them since 2007. Wow, time flies. Great service, no complaints.)
No comments yet
rpgwaiter · 1d ago
I’ve used them the past 3 years for my taxes, great experience and never had a single issue for what that’s worth
They don’t spam my email and phone unlike Intuit (even after I deleted my account)
agarren · 1d ago
Ditto - no spam at all. I do get reminders that it’s time to file, and conveniently, if nothing has changed since the previous year (address, employer, marital status, etc.) then they can pre-populate the form.
I believe they may even pay these companies to offer the service.
Free Tax USA doesn't have an income limit, and may be the only one, so I've used them for at least 5 years. They charge $10 for state filing, so I use CalFile instead.
My tax situation is pretty simple and they've filled my needs. The only issue I've had is with exempting Treasury bills from state tax but I don't file state with them anyway so maybe I missed something.
> The information given may be used to improve and develop and train our artificial intelligence and other machine learning models.
chneu · 23h ago
I've used em for years after TurboTax made it even more annoying to file for free.
I prep about a dozen returns every year with it. Id say it's the easiest and most straight forward e-file I've ever used. A simple return should take maybe 10 minutes. They don't upsell very hard either which is super nice.
They also keep your previous years return for free which greatly speeds up filing. Most services charge for that.
mleo · 1d ago
First time filing on our own in 25 years and it was great experience. Paid for the state filing. They didn’t seem to really push the add ons for federal.
orionsbelt · 1d ago
I highly recommend them. I don’t know what you mean by “trustworthy”, but they are a legit service and have way less dark patterns, upsell screens, charge less money, and are overall a vastly better experience than TurboTax.
wiml · 1d ago
I've been using opentaxsolve since... a while. Definitely a crusty Linux user's method, and it does cost me the price of a stamp each year, but I like it.
sadcodemonkey · 13h ago
Anyone know the story behind the release of this repo? It doesn't look like an official IRS organization account.
Direct File is a service from the United States Government that provides taxpayers the option to electronically file their federal tax return for free, directly with the IRS. The currently proposed budget bill supported by President Trump would end this service.
Nifty3929 · 1d ago
That is sufficiently dumb that I can only hope you're wrong. Any chance you have the relevant text?
zerocrates · 1d ago
SEC. 112207. TASK FORCE ON THE TERMINATION OF DIRECT FILE.
(a) Termination of Direct File.—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.
Nifty3929 · 15h ago
Thanks, and wow.
wredcoll · 1d ago
Just to add some context, there is right now two similarly named systems:
E-file: which is essentially just an api end point for accepting digitized tax returns and is what all the major (paid) tax software uses.
Direct file: a web based version of the 1040 irs forms which will, when filled out, submit the forms electronically.
=== Edit: there are actually three, the third is Free Fillable Forms, which is what I'm actually talking about here ===
Note that when I say "version of the forms" I mean that quite literally. The interface is as close as html can come to looking like a printed 1040 form and about 1 tiny step up from filling out a pdf version.
The forms will occasionally do math for you: some of the fields are marked as the sum of a set of fields and those will automatically do the addition for you, but that's the limit of the automation.
For example, to compute your actual owed taxes you need a percentage to multiply by your taxable income, and that number is found by looking through a roughly 10 page table that maps income ranges in brackets of $50 to a specific number (so 0-50 is one number, 50-100 is another, and so on up to several hundred thousand).
To get this number for the form you, of course, must open the help documentation in a separate tab and scan through it looking for your bracket.
My understanding as to why it works this way is that the irs is basically doing as much as they're legally allowed to. The irs is, as far as i know, forbidden by law, from developing any kind of software that helps you file taxes (or more accurately, competes with turbotax) and this web-form doesn't quite count as breaking that law.
I'll note in passing, that as a general rule "both sides" tend to take turbotax money to hobble the irs, this specific direct file was championed and funded by democrats, opposed by republicans and the republican president trump is trying to delete it.
wredcoll · 1d ago
Just for everyone's amusement, here's one of the emails I got when I made an error filling out the forms last year:
------
Dear Free File Fillable Forms Taxpayer:
Your 2023 federal tax return has been rejected due to the error(s) listed below.
When you have your solution(s), sign in to your Free File Fillable Forms account at https://www.freefilefillableforms.com Fix your error(s) and resubmit your return.
Be sure to re-enter the direct debit date (if used) and the e-file date in the Step 2 tab of Free File Fillable Forms.
If you are unable to resolve the error(s), you can mail your tax return and your payment by April 18, 2023 to avoid penalties and interest.
Here is your error(s):
Issue : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-pattern-valid. Value `` is not facet-valid with respect to pattern `[0-9]{9}` for type `EINType`.
The following information may help you determine the form at issue:
Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:ReturnData[1]/efile:IRSW2[2]/efile:EmployerEIN[1]
ipdashc · 1d ago
I got a similar one!
Issue : Business Rule IND-031-04 - `PrimaryPriorYearPIN` or `PrimaryPriorYearAGIAmt` in the Return Header must match the e-File database. If you are unable to provide a valid `PrimaryPriorYearPIN` or `PrimaryPriorYearAGIAmt`, then you may instead provide an Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) to electronically file your return. An IP PIN may not be used if you are filing Form 9465 standalone. If you wish to get an IP PIN and you don`t already have an account on IRS.gov, then you must register to validate your identity. Please visit www.irs.gov/getanippin for further information and resubmit your return.
The following information may help you determine the form at issue:
Field/Xpath: /efile:Return/efile:ReturnHeader/efile:Filer/efile:PrimarySSN
Got a bit of a kick out of it. Feels weird to see inside the "implementation layer" of sorts for the IRS, of all things.
EnderWT · 1d ago
You used Free Fillable Forms, not Direct File. Direct File is a web application piloted in 2024 with a larger release this past year. The URL is https://directfile.irs.gov/
PaulDavisThe1st · 1d ago
I had an error while working on my 2025 return that did in fact turn out to be an implementation error in the business logic. I was sort of proud!
bluSCALE4 · 1d ago
As an XML Specialist, this is perfectly clear to me.
wredcoll · 1d ago
I was in fact able to use that error message to fix the error but I resented every single minute of it.
ipdashc · 1d ago
I believe what you're referring to is Free File Fillable Forms. Direct File is a separate, newer, modernized service which is much closer to cloud-based commercial tax software (but with a bunch of eligibility restrictions at the moment).
wredcoll · 1d ago
You know, I was wondering about that this whole time, but when I tried to file taxes earlier this year, all I could find was the free fillable forms.
PaulDavisThe1st · 1d ago
Direct File's initial rollout was only available in a relatively small subset of states. Not sure why (since it handles federal returns) but there were reasons, I am sure.
somat · 1d ago
Additionally, as a final turd on the manure cake that is free fileable forms, if you watch your web requests you find out it is some sort of Intiut product. Or at least it goes through Intuit servers.
Honestly I don't even really mind the FFF, however byzantine, the forms are the native interface to declaring taxes. It just really bothers me that the IRS, the government organization that has one job, to receive taxes, has a primary interface that routes me through a company I am trying to avoid.
It is a large reason I am still filing paper forms in this internet connected age. Until the IRS gets it's online act togther it is still the most ergonomic option.
It's a dead program walking right now anyway, regardless of the budgeting.
> The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.
> There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.
Regardless of its fate, it's open sourced. It can now be forked and made better in far less time.
mixmastamyk · 1d ago
This looks like code to run the Direct File service. Is it useful to run it yourself?
timewizard · 1d ago
Is there some reason we can't just take the PDF forms, script them so they assist the filer, and then allow a form of digital attestation and filing?
What more needs to be done?
Henchman21 · 1d ago
How about we just have the gov't do the math based on what our employers already tell them and then send us a bill or refund. Why must we play this game as if the gov't doesn't know all the info already?
tallowen · 1d ago
There is a bunch of code to import w2s from the SSA in this codebase - this did happen this year for direct file. That being said, big issues remain:
- Employers don't tell the federal government about state tax information and when they do, the government doesn't store that information
- W2s aren't due to the SSA at the opening of tax filing season and penalties aren't commonly enforced for submitting w2s on time.
There are a bunch of us for whom it doesn't have all the info (if any, in fact).
Granted, the ranks of the self-employed are a small fraction of all taxpayers, and there's no reason the latter should be forced to do things as if they were part of the former.
Henchman21 · 9h ago
Yep I think the Pareto principle applies: let’s knock out 80% who can just be sent a bill/check.
SoftTalker · 1d ago
Because in many cases they don't know. They don't know about your self-employment income and business expenses. They might not know about your marital status and dependents. They won't know about various credits such as education expenses, solar or EV credits, etc.
smadge · 1d ago
What percentage of tax filers have a single W-2, maybe a 1099, and take the standard deduction? If I had to guess, 80%.
SoftTalker · 1d ago
Probably. And they could do their taxes on paper in 20 minutes if they weren't afraid to. TurboTax would like you to believe otherwise of course.
Henchman21 · 9h ago
That fear seems, anecdotally, to be related to fucking it up and incurring massive liability possibly jail time. It doesn’t even matter if that statement is true — it just seems to be The Fear.
This is sort of what I'm getting at. These are my taxes. I honestly don't want to involve a third party or sketchy links leading to janky websites. I want to go to IRS.gov, download a form, fill it out, submit it, all within a very limited context and with the smallest amount of feedback that the process completed successfully so I can relieve myself of the burden for another year.
The IRS actually already has the forms. It needs the scripting. It needs a digital submission system. That should be it and should be most of what average taxpayers actually need.
PaulDavisThe1st · 14h ago
The site is actually run in a partnership between the IRS and Intuit and some other company. The GOP prevented it from being branded as an IRS "product".
Why bother with the "interview" at all? Most, if not all, countries send their citizens a tax bill with what they are owed or due.
Very simple. No more guessing game.
This overly complex system we have in the USA is built intentionally to benefit multi-billion dollar tax preparation industry.
timewizard · 20h ago
You can deduct medical expenses if they're large enough relative to your salary.
You can deduct the cost of thefts. You can deduct alimony. You can deduct student loan interest. You can deduct business use of your car. Donations to charity. Bad loans you gave out. Gambling loses.
Life is not simple. You should not perceive this as an "interview." The tax industry is huge because our businesses are monopoly sized. The majority of money that is liable for tax purposes is held and moved by businesses. Your income taxes are not what this industry runs on.
crznthndr · 1d ago
Additional limitations if your household wages are more than $125,000
You can’t use Direct File if:
If your wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if you had more than one employer).
You file as Married Filing Jointly, and your spouse’s wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if your spouse had more than one employer).
You file as Married Filing Jointly, and you and your spouse's wages are more than $250,000.
You file as Married Filing Separately, and your wages are more than $125,000.
underyx · 1d ago
Why are these restrictions in place?
dmoy · 1d ago
Eyeballing it, I bet those specific restrictions are in place because:
$168.6k is suspiciously the same as the (2024) social security cap, so they probably didn't handle that edge case.
$250k is the start of NIIT, so they probably didn't handle that case either.
underyx · 1d ago
Thanks for the actual answer!
jljljl · 1d ago
Direct File was rolled out gradually as a pilot program. It was also only available for taxpayers in 12 states.
My guess: since the tax code is so complicated, they probably wanted to support the simplest and most common filing cases in the first release. Handling all the edge cases would delay the launch, and prevent them from collecting feedback. If the feedback and demand was positive for v1, they could expand the surface area in the future.
Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough
3eb7988a1663 · 1d ago
Assuming I am reading this Census table correctly, 2023 Table A-2 [0] says 76% of the US has a household income under $150k. So as an initial deployment, covering 3/4 of the country as the first filter is not terrible.
> Take a look at [Form 1040][1]. Line 12c asks the taxpayer to add lines 12a and 12b. This is a common pattern on tax forms. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
> There is a relationship betwen lines 12a, 12b, and 12c. In order to know what should be entered in 12c, we need to first know the values of 12a and 12b.
> This pattern might remind you of a spreadsheet. If we were to transcribe Form 1040 into Excel, we might imagine that line 12c would be a formula like =SUM(Line12A,Line12B). Excel spreadsheets are _declarative_, which is to say we define the relationships between cells using formulas, but we leave it up to Excel to determine how to solve the spreadsheet.
This is their data-relational langage.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
The name might seem a little sketchy, but it’s a legit service. I don’t know about “free” - I’ve always ended up paying to file at least one of state or federal, I don’t recall, but not pricy.
(Edit - looking closer, I’ve been using them since 2007. Wow, time flies. Great service, no complaints.)
No comments yet
They don’t spam my email and phone unlike Intuit (even after I deleted my account)
I believe they may even pay these companies to offer the service.
Free Tax USA doesn't have an income limit, and may be the only one, so I've used them for at least 5 years. They charge $10 for state filing, so I use CalFile instead.
My tax situation is pretty simple and they've filled my needs. The only issue I've had is with exempting Treasury bills from state tax but I don't file state with them anyway so maybe I missed something.
> The information given may be used to improve and develop and train our artificial intelligence and other machine learning models.
I prep about a dozen returns every year with it. Id say it's the easiest and most straight forward e-file I've ever used. A simple return should take maybe 10 minutes. They don't upsell very hard either which is super nice.
They also keep your previous years return for free which greatly speeds up filing. Most services charge for that.
I found a link to that organization here[0] at least, so this one at seems to be official.
[0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/ides-data-transm...
(a) Termination of Direct File.—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.
E-file: which is essentially just an api end point for accepting digitized tax returns and is what all the major (paid) tax software uses.
Direct file: a web based version of the 1040 irs forms which will, when filled out, submit the forms electronically.
=== Edit: there are actually three, the third is Free Fillable Forms, which is what I'm actually talking about here ===
Note that when I say "version of the forms" I mean that quite literally. The interface is as close as html can come to looking like a printed 1040 form and about 1 tiny step up from filling out a pdf version.
The forms will occasionally do math for you: some of the fields are marked as the sum of a set of fields and those will automatically do the addition for you, but that's the limit of the automation.
For example, to compute your actual owed taxes you need a percentage to multiply by your taxable income, and that number is found by looking through a roughly 10 page table that maps income ranges in brackets of $50 to a specific number (so 0-50 is one number, 50-100 is another, and so on up to several hundred thousand).
To get this number for the form you, of course, must open the help documentation in a separate tab and scan through it looking for your bracket.
My understanding as to why it works this way is that the irs is basically doing as much as they're legally allowed to. The irs is, as far as i know, forbidden by law, from developing any kind of software that helps you file taxes (or more accurately, competes with turbotax) and this web-form doesn't quite count as breaking that law.
I'll note in passing, that as a general rule "both sides" tend to take turbotax money to hobble the irs, this specific direct file was championed and funded by democrats, opposed by republicans and the republican president trump is trying to delete it.
------
Dear Free File Fillable Forms Taxpayer:
Your 2023 federal tax return has been rejected due to the error(s) listed below.
Your Submission ID is: 44011101892
Get help resolving your errors by using the Error Search Tool at https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/free-file-fillable-fo... You must follow the search instructions to find solutions
When you have your solution(s), sign in to your Free File Fillable Forms account at https://www.freefilefillableforms.com Fix your error(s) and resubmit your return. Be sure to re-enter the direct debit date (if used) and the e-file date in the Step 2 tab of Free File Fillable Forms.
If you are unable to resolve the error(s), you can mail your tax return and your payment by April 18, 2023 to avoid penalties and interest. Here is your error(s):
Issue : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-pattern-valid. Value `` is not facet-valid with respect to pattern `[0-9]{9}` for type `EINType`.
The following information may help you determine the form at issue: Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:ReturnData[1]/efile:IRSW2[2]/efile:EmployerEIN[1]
Honestly I don't even really mind the FFF, however byzantine, the forms are the native interface to declaring taxes. It just really bothers me that the IRS, the government organization that has one job, to receive taxes, has a primary interface that routes me through a company I am trying to avoid.
It is a large reason I am still filing paper forms in this internet connected age. Until the IRS gets it's online act togther it is still the most ergonomic option.
> The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.
> There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.
https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...
What more needs to be done?
- Employers don't tell the federal government about state tax information and when they do, the government doesn't store that information
- W2s aren't due to the SSA at the opening of tax filing season and penalties aren't commonly enforced for submitting w2s on time.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...
Granted, the ranks of the self-employed are a small fraction of all taxpayers, and there's no reason the latter should be forced to do things as if they were part of the former.
More or less as you describe, for your IRS returns, of arbitrary complexity and value.
The IRS actually already has the forms. It needs the scripting. It needs a digital submission system. That should be it and should be most of what average taxpayers actually need.
Very simple. No more guessing game.
This overly complex system we have in the USA is built intentionally to benefit multi-billion dollar tax preparation industry.
You can deduct the cost of thefts. You can deduct alimony. You can deduct student loan interest. You can deduct business use of your car. Donations to charity. Bad loans you gave out. Gambling loses.
Life is not simple. You should not perceive this as an "interview." The tax industry is huge because our businesses are monopoly sized. The majority of money that is liable for tax purposes is held and moved by businesses. Your income taxes are not what this industry runs on.
You can’t use Direct File if:
If your wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if you had more than one employer).
You file as Married Filing Jointly, and your spouse’s wages are more than $200,000 ($168,600 if your spouse had more than one employer).
You file as Married Filing Jointly, and you and your spouse's wages are more than $250,000.
You file as Married Filing Separately, and your wages are more than $125,000.
$168.6k is suspiciously the same as the (2024) social security cap, so they probably didn't handle that edge case.
$250k is the start of NIIT, so they probably didn't handle that case either.
My guess: since the tax code is so complicated, they probably wanted to support the simplest and most common filing cases in the first release. Handling all the edge cases would delay the launch, and prevent them from collecting feedback. If the feedback and demand was positive for v1, they could expand the surface area in the future.
Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough
[0] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2024/demo/income-poverty/...