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

(github.com)
242 points elijahwright_ | 1 comments | 30 Jun 25 22:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source

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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onetom ◴[01 Jul 25 10:21 UTC] No.44432388[source]▶
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)

replies(3): >>44432966 #>>44434846 #>>44436235 #
1. bigums ◴[01 Jul 25 15:24 UTC] No.44434846[source]▶
Sounds similar to what Tim Berners-Lee was working on with Solid (https://solidproject.org/about).