Maybe they should do taxes like every other civilized society instead of the bait and switch they do now.
Better yet, tax businesses and the top 10%, eliminate income tax for everyone else. It’s a net gain and not a small one.
IRS tax filing software released to the people as free software
Submitted 3 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/irs-direct-file-released-as-free-software
Comments
db2@lemmy.world 2 days ago
propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe 3 days ago
More free software is always a good thing.
Owlboi@lemm.ee 2 days ago
is there ever a case where free software would be bad?
propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Only if you’re a scumbag/useful idiot.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 2 days ago
I think that California and the Blue States will make good use of this, considering the shit that the Trump Regime has been pulling.
witten@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If they even continue paying federal taxes…
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Being an open source program, the Blue States can modify it for their own taxation apparatus. The money intended for the Federal can be held in escrow, then released into service of the states if the Federal doesn’t negotiate with the Blue States in good faith.
lung@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s so cool, maybe the first time in the history of humanity that we see open source tax software, that’s guaranteed to be accurate to the law. For one year at least
It runs Scala / Java, and has docker configs, decent documentation. And and ominous message explaining that some parts were too secret to open source so they had to rewrite chunks of it. Overall, it seems like it was a big project just to get this published, and I am impressed they managed it, given the software team was comprised of 3 different agencies and several contractor firms
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 days ago
It’s definitely not guaranteed to be accurate to the law. In fact, I’m surprised there isn’t a disclaimer to that effect on the GitHub project page. Maybe it’s because they’re the government and if you true to sue over an error, they can tell you to go pound sand.
Khanzarate@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Well the IRS says it is accurate.
It doesn’t say accurate to what standard but I think its pretty clear that “tax law” is the default here.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 days ago
Did the government claim it was accurate to the law? I’m guessing just providing code doesn’t open the government to liability. That would fall on anyone who implemented it. I always assumed that’s why for-cost software has Ts&Cs that indemnify them unless you pay extra for the protection.