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Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted

github.com

244 pointselijahwright_34 comments

the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season

the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/

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Thanks so much for keeping this going, and for the late 18F for open-sourcing these implementations... I hope there's a way we can institutionalize your efforts.

As a side note, when the documentation page is viewed in a dark mode browser, I see black text on black background (https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/).

I'll fix the docs today, thanks

Thank you for your work

i'm not from the US, but i did work on forms related to government workflows.

it bugged me for a long time why a person can't store facts about themselves and let some software figure out which of those facts are needed for filling out any form, which needs the usual personal facts.

then one can review the required facts and decide which ones are they willing to share.

in fact governments could even standardize the kind of info they are dealing with usually and when a citizen wants the government to do something, instead of filling out forms, they could provide their own, self-hosted fact db, run the govt's query and provide the results (after review)

I think the post office could have been this, but the political will wasn't there. Separation of banking from taxation and the postal system from both of those for separation of concerns for compartmentalization was probably at the forefront of the minds of the founders, since Washington himself had run a spy network and been personally hunted by soldiers and mercenaries on their own turf during the revolution, so I can't say these aren't legitimate concerns, but they haven't exactly aged well. At the time of the revolution and directly after the union, there was no federal income tax anyway.

> I think the post office could have been this

Explain. Id like to.know

I was responding to this aspect:

> it bugged me for a long time why a person can't store facts about themselves

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...

Hypothetically, you could have sent 0.01 to a friend and use the memo field as a poor man's postcard with free postage, provided in-system transactions were free, which they arguably ought to be, but likely never were or would be in actuality.

Sounds similar to what Tim Berners-Lee was working on with Solid (https://solidproject.org/about).

Taxes work on "self assessment" basis meaning you, the taxpayer have the burden to declare all facts relevant to assessment of your tax and you pay the tax.

Then, sometimes your case is picked for audit and then they check if what you declared is correct as per applicable laws or not.

See, here is a small mom and pop shop... who owns that? Is the premises on rent? How much ? Is the rent deed valid and proper? Maybe you are paying less rent than declaring? Are you actually employing people you say you are? Are you paying them exactly you say you are paying?

How would you ensure that fact db is not having funny data ?

Say i am saying i am paying 100 bucks a week for fuel but fact is, my shop is next door to my home and i am just pocketing this cash daily. If i keep putting this 100 bucks weekly expense in this factdb, how will govt know.that i am not lying?

That's how they work now in america. They don't have to.

As for fraud, the same way they check for lies now, cross reference reports and then audit.

It’s my understanding that they have expected ranges certain things should be within that’s considered normal and anything outside of that puts a higher risk of an audit or simple manual review/adjustment.

You're moving the goalposts; the purpose would be reducing toil (and possibly other costs) for the people who are currently tasked with filling out these types of forms.

There's nothing in the comment you're responding to that suggests that it's instead meant to be a solution to the problem of the government (or any other org) being unable to trust the inputs to its systems or ameliorate the costs of bad actors at all.

A person entering lies in their personal fact database tomorrow can submit the same lies on their personal income tax return today.

That is really awesome, which I could give more upvotes. I hope you can keep it running and get some support. (sry i've made it a life mission to avoid javascript when possible)

It really is embarrassing how ineffective and useless the US gov has become.

the https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/direct-file.html link in the readme results in 404

sorry I changed the name, here's the correct URL - https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/reference.html

Would absolutely love a command line. Maybe if I ever get free time and feel like dusting off my Java.

never understood exactly what is the code they released. is it just the from filler that only works for people with a single w2 and no stocks etc?

IRS Direct File on GitHub - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182356 - June 2025

https://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/

https://chrisgiven.com/2025/05/direct-file-on-github/

https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file

(In the latest version of the bill being negotiated in Congress, the language to sunset Direct File has been removed, but this of course could change due to the fluidity of the situation; regardless, we are all better off having learned from this and having access to the source code)

the code they released was everything that is necessary to run Direct File in development, but they removed code relating to MeF (the IRS's online submission API) and SADI (the IRS's auth system which is integrated with ID.me). most of the code is the backend, Fact Graph (which is a very complex rules engine), the client app (both the form and the screener when you go to directfile.irs.gov), and the state tax API

so it is the mostly useless system that only works for a single w2 :(

99.999% of people here would never be able to use it anyway.

it works with multiple W-2s I'm pretty sure. the goal is to make it work for everyone which is pretty difficult but I'm motivated to at least work on getting it to work with IRAs because I have one and I want to use this for next year

is this official but incomplete code better than the always open source but mostly complete open tax solver project?

I wouldn't know but at least this code has a good foundation to add onto

May be feed this to ai to teach us how to reduce taxes !!

For what it is worth, the Big Beautiful Bill contains this gem...

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.

(This is the text of the bill on the website as of the time I posted this, it can change or be wrong now.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...)

Not that I needed any more proof of how disgustingly anti-human the government has become. So depressing.

Intuit is owned by humans.

That section was just removed.

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