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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

I've been using FreeTaxUSA for a while now to do my taxes, and I like it very much. (If you use TurboTax or H&R Block or something, I strongly recommend giving FreeTaxUSA a look). I was sort of wondering if the IRS would just buy them wholesale and use that as the free file software, since it's already "finished" and making another one would be duplicated effort. But is there precedent for that, the government just buying a private company for its IP?

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>is there precedent for that, the government just buying a private company for its IP?

The government's preference would probably be to contract with them and license it.

US Digital Service and the current White House MO around digital service delivery [1] operates a bit differently. IRS modernization [2] [3] will be owned internally. Their systems are the iceberg under the surface, the website for citizen consumption is the little bit above the surface. They're hiring people who know what they're doing (from page 15 of the modernization pdf):

> Our overall success will depend on several special legislative proposals and regulatory authorities that we believe are appropriate for an effort of this scope and importance:

> Engaging the Office of Personnel Management to utilize existing direct hire authority for IT modernization positions and/or broadening government-wide critical pay authority

> Seeking reauthorization of IRS Streamlined Critical Pay Authority that expired in 2013

> Ensuring funding is available for multiple fiscal years at somewhat predictable intervals.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2023/09/22/fact...

[2] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-modernization

[3] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1666 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36976331

(please consider a tour of duty: https://www.usds.gov/apply | no affiliation, just an engaged citizen)

I gave FTuasa a go after seeing it mentioned here a lot. Unfortunately it seems the investment part is very manual compared to TurboTax. I have a couple of robotrader , brokerage accounts etc. on TurboTax it’s a few clicks and that’s imported, FTusa is tediously transcribing numbers off dozens of forms that I have no idea if I’m doing it right.

I reluctantly gave money to TT again.

This is not tax advice:

If your brokerage reports all of your trades to the IRS, which they likely are, then you can just enter a summary. You don't need to grant access to your outside accounts and import anything.

Right, I've always just entered the summary. However, that process is manual and requires scouring the forms for correct info. With TurboTax, it lets you integrate into the brokerage and just sucks down the info.

Your 1099-B should give you all the info right on the first page in a table.

Not really because FreeTaxUSA asks questions about whether there are state specific bonds that have already collected taxes, whether the investment qualifies as a foreign investment, etc... That requires digging in a bit.

Foreign taxes are lines 7 & 8 on the summary. A brokerage account shouldn't have state bonds, and I thought those were in line 12, but I can see how that would be more confusing.

A tangential comment given your mention of whatever 99 B form:

Every time HN discussion about US taxes comes, I imagine a sizeable group of users from developed country watch in amusement the craziness that the IRS makes its taxpayers go through to charge them money.

I know in Mexico and Chile everything is highly automated. In Mexico 50%+ of working class dont have to do ANYTHING, as whatever tax stuff needed is submitted by their employer.

Come on US... that we in Mexico have better automation for this is inconceivable. We look up to you for lots of things, particularly technology.

1099-anything, by definition, doesn't come from an employer. They're for other sources of income (brokerage sales, interest, etc.).

The US would need to vastly simply the tax code - remove all the various tax breaks for dependents/spouses, remove the progressive taxation scale, etc. - before it could be successfully automated.

I don't think this is true. For pretty much everyone except either small business owners or the very wealthy with exotic assets, the government already gets all the forms it needs to calculate all your taxes (employers send W-2s, brokerages already send 1099s, your bank sends your mortgage statement to calculate things like mortgage interest deductions, etc.). There's no reason it can't be automated for 9 out of 10 people.

I've got REITs. I've got pension investment. I've got a house I'm getting interest off of, I've got stock, both Mexican and US (TQQQ and chill!), and I work at a company earning enough to HAVE to go into the Mexican IRS portal do do my taxes "manually" (I.e. my employer cannot do it for me).

With all of that, I just get into SAT page, ask it to fill up everything with the data they already collected, review it, and agree on the $$$ they will give me back (yay mortage!).

It CAN be that simple. that's what systems are for: to automate complex processes. Computers excellent at it.

All

Blame this on the "government can't do anything right" party that gets into power and then proves themselves correct by shutting down efforts for the government to actually do things (because ideology).

Entering summaries for a bunch of accounts is tedious too. I’m happy to upload pdf statements too, they could scrape those.

Relative a of FreeTaxUSA employee here.

I'll let her know. She cares about UX.

This is a complaint on Reddit during tax time every single year. I would be surprised if no one at FreeTaxUSA heard of it.

Interesting. Unfortunately, from the way she talks about it, the kind of people that FreeTaxUSA hires would probably not be on Reddit most of the time.

Anyway, I let her know.

Personally, my pain point is the mail-in Form 8453 that comes with the "summary" option. I'd wish for a PDF upload option instead. At least two competitor products have this capability:

[1] https://www.form8949.com/tto-e-file-attach-work-around.html

[2] https://www.taxact.com/support/21598/2022/e-filing-attaching...

Are there any details about their tech stack you can share? I know they're using Java (there were pages ending in .jsp when I filed my taxes through them) but that's about it.

Not really. The .jsp pages are all I've seen. Sorry.

Also give her a high five and thank her! FreeTaxUSA is fantastic, even with the limitations.

I did, thank you!

Totally agree. A huge benefit of TT is the automated importing and parsing of forms, both for speed and accuracy in doing taxes. Without that connectivity, FreeTax USA is not much different from just filling out the IRS official pdf's.

There is no secret sauce with free tax usa or any of the others. It asks you questions and auto fills a pdf that ends up being surprisingly short in the end. Setting aside for a moment the window dressing on the ui and having to support all these concurrent users and their accounts, what it actually does is so simple. It really feels like the sort of site where the would make a good assignment for an intro to html class.

FreeTaxUSA is great and my situation isn't trivial. Think I paid $39? I hope the IRS does not buy them.

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