2017 Tax Software Developer's Guides and Test Cases | Hacker News Reader

2017 Tax Software Developer's Guides and Test Cases

mass.gov

205 points_jn40 comments

I found out yesterday that the German government provides a flowchart for developers wanting to calculate income tax

Can you provide a link to the mentioned flowchart as well, please?

It's on https://www.bmf-steuerrechner.de/interface/pap.jsp

However, this is the calculation for the monthly (pay as you go) wage tax and other deductions and not the yearly income tax.

https://www.bmf-steuerrechner.de/interface/pseudocode.jsp

There's a pdf version as well:

http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Web/DE/Themen/Steuern/...

The problem is in computing the input values; it's quite hard to figure out without examples, except the most simple cases.

And they even provide an API you can run tests against, to ensure that your implementation is correct:

https://www.bmf-steuerrechner.de/interface/schnittstelle.jsp

A government website with a decent mobile version. Is this a first?

The desktop version is ridiculously huge though. I need to zoom to 66% to get a reasonable view.

The UK Government websites are quite well known for their accessibility. Here's an arbitrary page as an example: https://www.gov.uk/check-income-tax-last-year

You develop income tax software on a mobile phone?

No, but I browse HN on a cell phone.

Courtesy of USDS [0] perhaps?

[0] https://www.usds.gov/

Edit: Realized this is actually Massachusetts and not federal.

The social security website (ssa.gov) is mobile friendly. I haven't visited any other federal websites recently.

There's been a lot of effort put into 'government digital transformation' over the past few years.

You should see how I file my personal income tax, or my quarterly business tax account, in Australia. Completely responsive and accessible.

Very impressive. Does the federal government have anything comparable to this?

That is the federal government.

No, it is the government of Massachusetts.

Oops.

That's actually what I was looking for when I found this. Sadly, it doesn't look like there is (but contact me if you find one!)

I am looking for the tax information as well for a soon to be launched Staffing Agency back office software. Taxation is the last major thing to finish... Been collecting the information from wherever I can find... but would love to have one authentic source :)

Does anyone choose to write this kind of software?

Isn't most software a variation on this type of thing, payroll, invoicing, etc.

I doubt it's most software in percentage of code, but I suspect it's by far the biggest value of software to the economy.

Maybe it is no ones life dream to do it, but sometimes you just find a job and it happens to be something 'random' like this.

If someone asked me to work on this and gave me a huge salary, though, I'd gladly jump on it.

Most software isn't somebody's dream. It's just dealing with "dumb stuff somebody's gotta do" because there's a paycheck.

(See also - basically every profession. I don't know how many architects choose to design parking garages or dreary subdivisions, but hey, they gotta eat too.)

> or dreary subdivisions

There are a million little details that can go in to making a house more livable, pleasant, or delightful to live in. An architect that loves these details and enjoys knowing how much her work affects the lives of the families that live there would relish working on a subdivision...

That sounds like just the architect we need! I didn't mean they're all dreary; I was just trying to pull an example of a job someone does for the check and not because it's the pinnacle of their craft.

For that matter, some parking garages are quite visually interesting. Most are horrendous, though, in my view at least.

So, the same can be said about writing dreary software as well. It can be fun thinking about the most effective / efficient way to move data around, or to structure your code, even if it's just for a straightforward CRUD app.

This kind of software chooses you :-)

Actually, it's quite rewarding once you get into it. Serious business, people depend on you getting it right, but still nobody dies if a bug slips by.

Getting into it requires a year or two, though.

I'm one of those nutjobs who actually enjoys working with billing and payment. There's something soothing to writing software which has to be highly tested, well-written and handle lots of edge cases.

It's a sharp contrast to the day-to-day startup philosophy of "move fast and break things".

Exactly. The type of software for which it is easy to write automated unit tests and only the most clueless manager would not give you the time and resources to do so.

One of the smartest things you can do is to work on dumb things no-one else wants to do.

Absolutely! I love problems that have an easily understandable value proposition like "we take the grief out of doing taxes." In my experience it's the biggest single success factor in writing good software.

So if you like to write successive business software--and get paid--this is a great problem to go after.

If by "this kind of software", you mean software that solves a problem that almost every adult in the country is guaranteed to deal with on a yearly basis... which involves mostly logic, forms, and arithmetic, without any really hard problems... yet which is too complex and ever-changing to want to do it without software tools, and also dry enough that the SV/VC crowd leaves your niche alone...

Yeah, I think that sounds like a pretty good area in which to choose to write software.

this is so awesome!

Good to have it, better not to need it.

> Good to have it, better not to need it.

The same can surely be said about any problem software is meant to solve (that it's good to have test cases, but better not to have the problem); and such an impossibly general remark seems not to be very useful.

Flat tax. No more problem.

At least, that's what I'm guessing was meant by the grandparent. That's all _I_ can manage to think at any rate,* is how many tax dollars and man-hours have gone into producing this guide, let alone the rest of the industry that's built up around the somehow herculean task of paying one's tax†, literal myriads of jobs which provide no real value to anyone‡, save that of relief from navigating the Gordian monstrosity that is our tax code: a societal negative value of epic proportions which (unlike so many of the real hard problems facing us today) could just vanish by simply bulldozing the rulebook.

The rules, the exceptions, the loopholes, the brackets, the cutoffs, the deductions, the exemptions, the penalties, the incentives, all of it. Burn it to the ground. Everybody pays 30%, or whatever. Or perhaps everybody earning below $FAT_STACKS pays 30% * ($MY_SAD_SALARY / $FAT_STACKS). Or whatever. Better yet, let's tax consumption instead of production. Perhaps excepting food, clothing, shelter. Treat yoself? Have at it, but 40% of that Cessna goes to Uncle Sam. That 1.2kg of bling? Okay, only 30% because it doesn't pollute, it just looks stupid.

Of course, none of that's going to happen. If I'm honest, I'd be a happy camper if only the Infernal Rich Suits didn't put the onus on _me_ to run my numbers through this Rube Goldberg device you cooked up and ostensibly understand. _Especially_ as you already have my W2⁂, heck thanks to withholding you already have my money! I never had a choice in the matter! So why the pointless exercise, either calculate the bloody number and send a check (or just venmo me yo), or just _keep_ it all, and please don't break my kneecaps. The guns are on your side, after all. But let's not get into a 2nd Amendment debate this early in the morning.

...whoops, I ranted there a bit. I might be a little stressed, something about this time of year. Can't quite put my finger on it. But don't worry, once April 20th rolls around, the herbal remedies⬫ will take effect and I'll be back happy as a clam.

* (once past the initial "hmm, that's mildly interesting")

† by "tax" I mean specifically income tax in the US. There are of course bunches of other taxes, but they generally work as intended and don't cause hypertension

‡ with apologies to tax pros, you're all fantastic humans and like no offense, but your job shouldn't exist

or at least encyclopedic proportions

⁂ along with my savings balance, stock portfolio, credit score, marriage, er, relationship status, and what I ate for breakfast, because like it or not, Big Brother is manifest

⬫ which God gave us, which grow out of the dirt just like corn, which I, a grown-up, have the liberty to consume because I live in this great nation which was founded on such liberty. And justice. For all. Except the president. Because he's special. Very special.

I did not mean to suggest that there was no remedy to the problem of taxes (although my suspicion is that any two-word solution is probably too simplistic), but rather that, given the existing problem of taxes, it is better to have these test cases than not. (Similarly, it is better not to have starvation or poverty than to have charities that help the starving and the poor, but, given the existence starvation and poverty, it is better to have the charities than not.)

The people who wrote the test cases are presumably not the people who wrote, or who can change, the tax code; they were making the world better in the way that was available to them.

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