Am I being dumb or does this not actually contain the facts about the tax code? Is the /demo/all-facts file supposed to be the “real” facts? Are the XML fact files provided in another location?
It’s pretty cool to see the way that the IRS handles defining and maintaining its tax calculations, but also a machine-readable tax code seems cool too.
I believe the actual IRS tax code implementation is in a separate repo here: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file while the originally linked repo is the fact graph tooling decoupled from the tax implementation.
I’ve had frustrating experiences with TurboTax due to its overly complex interface, aggressive data collection under the guise of saving money (which it doesn’t deliver), and a convoluted pricing structure that rivals the IRS’s own complexity.
I hope this initiative is good enough to enable domain experts and good people to build transparent, user-friendly alternatives to challenge TurboTax’s market grip.
Has anyone encountered promising tools or approaches that tackle these pain points?
Intuit spent $3.8 million on lobbying against Direct File in 2023, HR Block another $3 million. In total, the tax prep industry has spent $93 million lobbying against the Free File program since 2003 (through 2023, couldn't find a more recent source).
Independent analysis of official state reports contradicts you. It’s easier to look at states than to analyze which federal rep submitted which amendment or rider
I used Cash App Taxes last year (after years of H&R Block and TurboTax before that), and it worked great and covered all my needs which are more complex than the average tax filer. 100% free.
I've used freetax for the past couple years. My then-girlfriend's tax situation got more complicated when she accepted tuition money from a trust fund. TurboTax wanted her to pay for the small business edition to covered the necessary forms which happened to cost more than her refund. I threw everything into freetax and only had to pay for the state filling.
Note: Freetaxusa.com has not done a good job with Form 3921 (ISO grant exercises) and AMT carryover. If you have exercised ISO grants or later sold stock purchased in years in which you paid AMT, do not use freetaxusa.com. You will lose more in tax costs vs. finding a real CPA willing to go through your nuanced math.
I used Free Fill Fillable Forms last year for both federal and state. I honestly don't know why I didn't try them sooner. It sounds daunting, filling out your own returns, but it was quite painless for my situation.
It's nice to see an open sourced implementation of the US tax code! This was part of the IRS Direct File codebase that allowed people to file their taxes for free, directly with the IRS. It was canceled earlier this year by the Trump administration. It looks like the Fact Graph was already opensourced a couple months ago and that version of the factgraph lives here: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/main/direct-f...
I'm curious why a second repository was created for this.
Having talked at length with one of the developers from 18F at a conference who was fired along with many of the other folks that worked on Direct File, I can assure you that it's no longer being worked on.
The 2024 site remains up so people can file their taxes for that year, but it will no longer be updated.
Any idea what the actual deduction it supposedly found for private school?
You can pay for K-12 with 529 or Coverdell ESA funds. But neither allows deductions for contributions. Only growth in either is tax free (assuming it’s spent on education expenses).
Many states allow a state tax deduction for 529 contributions, which could net you up to an 8ish% discount if you’re in a high tax locality (e.g. NYC).
I've also saved a bit of money on taxes just by thinking about possible deductions and asking LLMs whether they exist. Of course to actually claim such deductions I need to follow instructions from the IRS/state tax agencies so it's hallucination proof: I'm still manually reading the instructions from the tax agencies to understand how to claim them.
I guess as long as it's for entertainment purposes only. I'm going to file "actually following tax/legal advice from a potentially hallucinating LLM" under NOPE.
Model training data already contains all the text there is[0], so they can already answer questions like this (especially with web search), but they aren't good at tax calculations.
The problem is that the text of US tax code isn't enough to know the correct action to take. The IRS has semi-formal policies based on how it has chosen to interpret the statutes. There are areas of gray that they don't clearly specify. Some of this is in supplementary publications but it still has subjective elements. One example is that settlements for "serious injuries" are regarded as non-taxable income. What constitutes serious is a squishy concept.
You can technically use the language model as a data model. That was the quick hack that started it all, autocomplete on a question produces the answer, yes.
However it's clear that we are moving towards separating the data and the language model. Even base chatgpt is given Search Tools and python Tools instead of producing them by text, the tool call itself may be generated by the model though.
You can for sure use a pure LLM to ask it questions about tax code, but we'll probably see specific tools that only contain canon law and kosher case law, and sources it properly. Y'know instead of halucinating
> What does it mean for the license to say "within the US"?
It means exactly what it says; you have to read the whole thing (or at least the two sentences before the CC 1.0 Universal text, which is the operative mechanism by which the second sentence is effected), not a fraction of the first sentence.
> Does this mean this software cannot be used outside the US?
No. The license explains two things:
(1) Without any license, this is automatically public domain in the US because it is a federal government work.
(2) The federal government (as the owner of the copyright at creation outside the United States, at least anywhere that applies the common rules underlying the Berne Convention) waives copyright worldwide, and does so via the CC 1.0 Universal declaration (the text of which is then included.)
So, it is, to the extent that this is legally possible, copyright-free globally.
Some countries don't recognize the concept of Public Domain works. In the US, many government works are Public Domain as a matter of law. This creates complications internationally in those countries that don't recognize the legitimacy of Public Domain as a legal concept. Nonetheless, the US still wants to make it available internationally.
To satisfy these conflicting requirements, the US government places it in the Public Domain in the US to satisfy US law. Additionally, they make it available internationally under a license that approximates the intent of Public Domain while still being recognized as a legally valid thing.
Good question. Copyright laws are country-specific, right? So perhaps it is just trying to be clear that there is no license being asserted outside of the US.
My eyes read Scala but my brain was thinking Clojure, so I was a bit confused on why there weren’t any parentheses for the first couple of seconds looking at the source.
If there weren't so many loopholes and tax dodges for billionaires and tax-preparer protectionism[0], whatever this is (ontology and/or knowledge graph, or something else) wouldn't even be necessary.
0: If Intuit (TurboTax) and others didn't keep lobbying to keep it so complicated, the IRS would be able to opt-out auto-calculate tax bills for income, estate, and corporate taxes automatically like many other advanced economies.
PS: Federal shutdown day 16. IRS press office remains open. And most of the tax enforcement divisions were recently RIFed because it's too annoying for rich people to game the system to dodge taxes.
It’s pretty cool to see the way that the IRS handles defining and maintaining its tax calculations, but also a machine-readable tax code seems cool too.