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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.
Look like many of them are specifically the xml files here:

https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/tree/e0d5c84451cc5...

From https://github.com/IRS-Public/fact-graph/blob/main/docs/fact...:

> Standardize Fact Dictionaries as a canonical format for declaratively modeling tax logic

It looks like just an HTTP interface to a database, not the actual data.
As far as I am aware, fact just means shared assumption. This seems entirely reasonable for a tax code.
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?

DirectFile was quite good for the one year I was able to use it and addressed your concerns. Don't worry, that's since been taken care of.

https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-...

I can totally see the minds running TurboTax spending a lot of money to make this happen.
Just a heads up, your URL 404’s
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 file in multiple states and unfortunately Cashapp taxes said it doesn't support that use case the last time I tried. Freetaxusa worked great though.
FreeTaxUSA is legitimately fantastic!
I love em, I don’t know why anybody uses TurboTax. Good product, generous freemium model with transparent pricing
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.
TurboTax’s advertising is borderline fraudulent in my opinion.

Freetaxusa.com (no affiliation) is just as good and legitimately free.

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.
combined with excel1040 this is the way to go imho
The H&R Block software is better imo.
Cash App Taxes
This was such a fun neat part of the Direct File code drop 5 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131901

In particular there's a pretty nice inline tutorial that's still there in that release: https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file/blob/main/direct-f...

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.

I wonder too. Perhaps the intent is for it to be standalone for general usage and not just as a part of the direct file project?
Seems so, according to this file: https://github.com/IRS-Public/fact-graph/blob/main/docs/from...

> The main changes are: [...] converting the fact-graph to a standalone library [...]

I'm still disappointed that they got rid of Direct File, such a promising start...
Big W for the tax lobby, big L for the rest of us
It's still there. They like saying things and not doing them.

https://directfile.irs.gov

So it's always possible they'll just forget to shut it off.

I wonder how this can be used with an LLM to provide interesting tax advice? I'd love to regularly ask questions of the tax code...
patio11's already saved over $2k apparently, maybe he'll do a more formal write-up at some point. (A couple threads here https://x.com/patio11/status/1977425626584711668 and here https://x.com/patio11/status/1978168404793037087 )
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.
Makes me wonder if someone has already trained a model on the tax code. Would be interesting for sure.
> As a work of the United States Government, this project is in the public domain within the United States.

What does it mean for the license to say "within the US"?

Does this mean this software cannot be used outside the US?

> 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.

Are the rules versioned somehow? I didn't see that.
How can this be used to hack to save money !!
Surprised to learn we still have an IRS
Scala mentioned
Why would I want to use this over Prolog/Datalog?
Because prolog/datalog don't offer a list of questions that you can ask based on context to calculate someone's US taxes.