this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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[–] Vinstaal0 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Was the US so behind that they didn't have a way to file taxes online for free?

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

Not just that. The tax preparation industry has gotten tax more complex and harder to file in the US

You get the government you can afford. The tax preparation industry has been able to buy several governments

[–] Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately yes

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not behind, ahead. Just you wait.

[–] Vinstaal0 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Uh no … the US is behind on this and payment platforms and invoice creation and a ton of other shir

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure you got what I meant, which was that the US may end up dragging others in its wake. Time will tell. I just know it's not just the US that has seen a rise in right wing politics.

And so, yeah, I said it kind of tongue in cheek, but I'm concerned it's the start of a trend. But hey, maybe there's an asteroid inbound.

[–] Vinstaal0 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Here the second right most party just let the coalition fall

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate a bit, as far as where here is and what coalition? I have ideas but I don't wanna make assumptions. And obviously that's is you feel comfortable doing so, not trying to blow you up. But I'm interested in what's happening elsewhere you know? And I am just not sure I trust the news.

[–] Vinstaal0 1 points 10 hours ago

In NL Geert Wilders let the coalition fall but it was one of the worst coalitions we have had

[–] madjo 5 points 1 day ago

Yes, thanks to the powerful lobby from Turbotax.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago
[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh that's awesome. I hope it can still be accepted by the IRS for the future (if we still have one in ~3 years) but it would be neat to just be able to have an open standard for online filing.

[–] Bluewing@discuss.online 8 points 1 day ago

Don't worry, there will always be an IRS for us plebes.

[–] LorIps@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's licensed under CC0 to anyone wondering. BSD 0-Clause would probably be better but still fantastic.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

CC0 is a horrible thing to use for software. It seems great, but it specifically does not give patent rights. Compare that to MIT which implicitly does so. CC0 specifically says it does not.

[–] LorIps@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The US government doesn't (to my knowledge at least) have copyright protections so MIT wouldn't be possible. BSD 0-Clause is just better because e.g. Austria doesn't allow you to cede copyright to the public domain and CC0 directly mentions the public domain in the terms of the license.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Interesting, SPDX does not list 0BSD as FSF approved, but FSF does approve it. This isn't the first problem I've seen with SPDX's list. They say CC0 is FSF approved but FSF only says it is approved for things besides code.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

https://spdx.org/licenses/

[–] Landslide7648@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Could you explain why this is bad? Software patents aren’t a great thing, are they?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Correct. They're bad. And if someone releases code under CC0 that has patented stuff in it you may be liable for using their patent without permission because CC0 says in section 4a,

No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.

Compare that to MIT which is considered to implicitly grant patent rights by saying you may deal in the software without restriction. Apache specifically gives you explicit patent rights in section 3.

Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

So the problem is that CC0 in it's public license fallback specifically says that it does not grant patent rights.

CC0 is a trap for software. Please avoid it. Please encourage others so avoid it.

To the extent of my knowledge, the only public domain dedication with permissive license fallback that is approved by both FSF and OSI is the WTFPL. Which is also a crayon license. Public domain is a weird concept and not all jurisdictions have it and not all jurisdictions allow you to manually put things into it. This is why they need the permissive license fallback. You're better off using a well known and well understood permissive license.

[–] Landslide7648@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 hours ago

Thank you for the through explanation! That was very helpful

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Correct. You release something under CC0, someone else sees it, patents it, and sues you.

[–] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 458 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (42 children)

really good article with a couple surprises in there.

"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 109 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (15 children)

Dunno, sounds like some fucking commie shit to be. And not the kind i can someyimes get on board with when it comes time to do secret police shebanigans, but the bad scary kind where they dont even have a use for police.

Wouldn't it be better to just give the code for free to a good corporate citizen who can be entrusted with its stewardship?

Edit: yes of course we rent it back!

[–] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 78 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

We need better than that. We need a pinky promise.

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[–] czl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Bro why are people downvoting this when it is so clearly a joke

[–] fiddledeedee@sopuli.xyz 39 points 2 days ago

because its the internet in 2025 and we simply cannot tell anymore

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[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 42 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What happened to the title of this?? Jeez

[–] OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml 48 points 2 days ago

“The IRS Tax Filing Software that TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced” might be more clear but headlines try to cut those sorts of words out, unfortunately at the cost of readability sometimes.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They accidentally included 8 verbs. (tax, filing, is, trying, kill, got, open, sourced)

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But most of those aren't used as verbs here.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago

right, but you can only tell what's used as a verb after you've parsed it.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 33 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I got told I couldn't get a tax return because they flagged me for potential fraud, so I have to go to ID.me to verify.. but then my account got banned while trying to verify my information.

Fml

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

I love id.me, I'm so glad I had to give my facial data to them to collect unemployment insurance!

Guess that means they don't want your money! Woo! (this is not legal advice, pay your taxes)

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 145 points 3 days ago (8 children)
[–] dhork@lemmy.world 72 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Hurry up and clone that ASAP, this is gonna get taken down once DOGE realizes what it is

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 51 points 3 days ago (9 children)

More likely they'll just turn off or unpublish the API that it depends on.

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[–] UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 104 points 3 days ago (3 children)

TurboTax owned buy intuit, part of H&R block who has partnered with credit karma. Everything is a monopoly now

[–] smashing3606@feddit.online 39 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure intuit and h&r block are competitors, not the same compamy.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 67 points 2 days ago (3 children)

You are correct.

Here's an annoying thing i just learned about H&R Block:

As of 2022, H&R Block's tax preparation service shares user data with Facebook, which can be used for targeted advertising. This can include sensitive financial information from health savings accounts and college expenses, and this tax data is shared without consent even for users who opt out of the service.

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[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@startrek.website 54 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's already got 4 PRs

lol

[–] jayandp@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)
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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 53 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Unless it's maintained it won't be of much use. It needs to be kept up to date with tax laws, and it relies entirely on the IRS accepting the generated returns. It seems it may function for now, though.

Direct File interprets the United States' Internal Revenue Code (26 USC) as plain language questions, the answers to which should be known to taxpayers without need of external instructions or publications. Taxpayers' answers are then translated into standard tax forms and transmitted to the IRS's Modernized e-File (MeF) API, which is available for authorized public use

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago

Suck a bag of dicks, TurboTax

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