IRS Direct File team disbanded
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I've scanned some of the DOGE stuff and the fact that I have seen pretty much no mention or discussion of the big budget items: social security, military, medicare, and medicaid does not make me optimistic that this is going to do anything about government spending...
it doesn't, the purpose of DOGE isn't to "improve government efficiency", it's a random company being allowed to take over portions of the actual government.
also, killing Direct File is an explicit ask from the H&R Block etc and their lobbyists, since they'll lose business if filing taxes becomes easier. they also oppose any genuine attempt to make the tax system itself more sensible for the same reason.
"Taxes are bad. Anything that makes collecting taxes easier or better is bad."
It doesn't. This is a corporate takeover of key government functions. This is just one small part of the plan.
Phase 1, which we're in now is to blame everything on bad governance.
Phase 2 is to say: 'business' can fix it and auction off the US government. Schools, the Post Office, Social Security, elements of law enforcement, and much more.
Phase 3: Read Balaji's "The Network State". TLDR: It will be to give corporations state power, including but not limited to owning and passing laws on their land, and having their own enforcement police/military.
IRS Direct File saves a lot of people money, just not rich people.
If it costs rich people money, they don't want it, regardless of how much money it saves individuals.
the entire premise of the Trump administration is to hand out the fed'gov to large companies and the hyper-wealthy. is this really that much of a surprise?
It was not removed.
What makes you think any of this is anything to do with government efficiency.
> It seems like a handout to private tax preparers.
Yes.
"Of the $13.0 million spent on pilot development and implementation, $10.6 million is technology and product development costs and $2.4 million is operational costs (customer service, cloud computing, user authentication, etc.)"
"Nearly half of Direct File users reported paying for tax preparation last year, and the Treasury Department estimates that Direct File users saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees"
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107236
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5969.pdf
edit: this comment had a much different estimate earlier based on a less specific source
https://bsky.app/profile/vermontgmg.bsky.social/post/3lhcg2b...
> Not for nothing, but Direct File by the IRS was one of the best things the USG has done in years — it allowed millions of Americans to stop paying predatory fees to TurboTax. The literal only people who oppose it are TurboTax lobbyists.
the second link in my earlier comment provides much more direct data, estimating $5.6 million in tax preparation fees saved compared to operation costs of $2.4 million. i've updated my original comment now to remove my personal estimate.
$220 source: https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/NSACCT/725010a8...
https://budget.house.gov/press-release/us-national-debt-surp...
My naive view is that this was a genuinely useful effort being wasted and an operational cost of $2.4M _looks_ like a steal, but would appreciate better comparison from people more informed than me.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
That said, it's clear from this tweet that Musk views this program as a bad one. So I'm definitely concerned a good effort will be lost.
And so having him promote such a negative tweet about the effort just seems out of nowhere.
Well, now you know why most here are not cautiously optimistic about DOGE. Welcome to the club.
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer stopped working, but I did comment on some of the costs here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42562822
Medicare and Medicaid is the single biggest cost--it's quite large in fact--but paying for the actual services (private services) is where the bulk of the costs comes from.
The actual fat is private industry over-charging and over-billing Medicare and Medicaid, but this is the same parasitic problem that we see in private health care in the US.
Why? Because of regulatory capture and lobbying by the health lobby; the same lobbyists who also double-dip by having both employers pay for the plans as well as having the insured pay out of pocket through "high deductibles".
This is the "fat" that MAGA politicians refuse to touch, because they're just as corrupt as every other politician in the so called swamp.
PS I doubt you'll see this, but I've been meaning to respond for some time now.
It feels like you're falling for the Politician's Fallacy here ("Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done."). You're right that there's broad agreement that the fat needs to be trimmed, but that doesn't make DOGE a good idea, and I don't think we've heard anything about them that isn't terrible, illegal, or both.
How many people here think they could write a direct tax filing program that doesn't cost 10+ million dollars?
What I would like from the comment sectection is how would you implement this system more effectively not a bunch of NPC elon bad comments.
What's the purpose of these whining comments? When will chatgpt replace these people or has that already occurred?
Even if it were removed in the near future, as long as it's up, you can be confident that your tax info will be handled properly, as it uses the same interface for tax submissions as all the existing third party tax filing software.
-- DF engineer
If you want to know what's going on with flags and these stories on HN, I've written quite a bit about it over the last couple days. There's a shorter version at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922234 and two longer ones at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (including a later reply). If you (or anyone) read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Btw, I'm pretty confident this getting removed from the front page before it was flagged wasn't "imaginary."
(What I called imaginary was attributing HN outcomes to Elon, Garry, or Austen Allred (?!))
I'm not sure what heavy-handed moderating you might be referring to but if you want to mention some specific examples, I can try to respond. Mostly what people are complaining about right now is that mods aren't overriding user flags actively enough, so your comment seems a bit counter-trend (which is fine!)
I'd have no problem with the content if it was in the mainstream media or some kind of analysis on a blog.
My own taxes are crazy because my wife runs a riding academy, we have a rental house, etc.
My son was a candidate for the 1040EZ back in the day (he only had a W-2) but Direct File was an unmitigated disaster for him last year because he had trouble creating an account, probably because he'd never filed a tax return.
While we were on the phone trying to get support (we put it off too long) I was able to download the 1040 and the corresponding form from New York and we filled it out, hung up, and mailed it the next day.
And with traditional news outlets, sometimes they make it impossible to find the actual primary source because they refuse to hyperlink things (though the Verge is good about that).
Then again, if the entire front page were X links, I'd find that less interesting than more thoughtful, longer analysis. So I agree and disagree.
Big F Federation in the Fediverse is less important in my mind than the small-f federation that I see something cool on Mastodon I should be able to link to it from Bluesky or Threads or whatever. The notifications and all that are just the cherry on top.
The principled reason to "never link to X" is that X will suppress your visibility if you link out of X. If X punishes you from linking to an HN discussion I think HN shouldn't be linking back to X. The same holds true for Facebook, Threads and Instagram, though it is unusual for someone to get the idea that the HN audience would care about any content on those sites.
My conspiracy theory: the names you mentioned don't give a rat's ass what some anon posts on this "website"