Before you mistake the move as an act of resistance by those within the agency who are trying to keep the project alive, Direct File getting open-sourced was always part of the plan. The code was published in compliance with the SHARE IT Act, which requires agencies to share custom source code (though, of course, the Trump administration is not always motivated by following the law, so this wasn’t a given).
In a report published last year, the IRS explained its reasoning for making the code available publicly: “First, it would enable public scrutiny of that code and invite independent groups to assess its accuracy and report potential issues. Second, other tax administrators, both in states and internationally, could build upon and contribute to the IRS’s work, improving the robustness of the software over time and providing additional public value.”
This works so long as DOGE doesn’t get into the IRS offices and start turning off all the APIs.
The APIs used by TurboTax? Unlikely
With the way things have been going I’m starting to wonder if they even know what an API is, lol
Incredibly based.
why did trump try to kill it?
Because TurboTax lobbied to change the narrative to “we already have private market solutions for tax, therefore the government hosting a no-cost option is actually wasteful and bad for the budget”
“Don’t compete with us in this supposed free market”
wow, complicated.
Ugh, it’s licensed CC0 public domain. Assholes.
Can you walk me through why you think this is bad? Doing a quick search for the license didnt make it apparent to me.
It means that any company can take that code, modify it (as would be required every year per IRS tax changes), and resell it without being required to publish the source code changes.
What many European countries are doing is requiring the government to publish code under a copyleft license. That would allow companies to also benefit from this code to make their own tools (which they could also sell), and it would require them to publish the source code of their improvements.
Basically copyleft legally ensures collaboration. Public domain does not.
