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anigbrowl 2 days ago [-]
I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading this. Although it's necessarily opinionate d(the lead author was part of the Direct file team) it comes off as very even-handed, giving equal consideration to successes and failures, and addressing the partisan political environment in factual terms.
It's unusually well-written, providing lots of key details or dropping in relevant context without ever losing sight of the big picture and the looming deadlines. I expected to just read the executive summary and then skim the rest, but it held my attention the whole way through.
LastTrain 2 days ago [-]
There isn’t much to study - it didn’t succeed or fail on the merits - someone didn’t like it because he didn’t create it so it got axed.
ronbenton 2 days ago [-]
I disagree wholeheartedly that there isn’t much to study. Direct File was actually a resounding success, especially when you consider how much difficulty governments tend to have shipping good software products. There is a lot of good information in here that government entities can learn from.
mixdup 2 days ago [-]
Including how and why it died. That is an important lesson for the entire governmental enterprise, including all decision-makers, to learn: that government CAN deliver something good and one single person should not be in totalitarian control
locknitpicker 2 days ago [-]
> That is an important lesson for the entire governmental enterprise, including all decision-makers, to learn: that government CAN deliver something good and one single person should not be in totalitarian control
This is only a major epiphany to proponents of a US-based ideological current, and mostly the result of anti-communist cold war propaganda. The rest of the world is well aware that state projects can and do succeed more than they fail.
IncreasePosts 2 days ago [-]
I think it speaks to doing things "the right way". Direct file could have been mandated by Congress, but it wasn't. Instead it only directed the IRS to do a "study" as a "voluntary agency initiative". That left full control of whether it should be done in the hands of the IRS and the executive branch.
throw0101d 2 days ago [-]
> Direct file could have been mandated by Congress, but it wasn't.
Something being mandated by Congress is no protection at times:
More concretely and timely for this discussion - the beneficial ownership registry was passed in the 2021 NDAA by congress and signed by Biden. So there's a law on the books that FinCEN needs to collect the ownership data for all US companies to prevent money laundering.
This week, Bessent decided that the signature policy of the Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan effort to stymie cartels and foreign oligarchs, would not only be stopped, but they instructed FinCEN to delete all the records they've already collected.
Easily the most lawless gang of corrupt bureaucrats that have ever held office in the US.
Not a funding issue per se, but Congress also passed a law requiring that the "Epstein files" be released by December 2025. Yet here we are, ~9 months later, and the Republican administration is still violating the law's deadline and its requirements not to black out the names of people who aren't trafficking-victims.
Meanwhile, Republican legislators are looking at the people responsible and *checks notes* ... rewarding them with powerful government jobs. [0]
It had talented software engineers involved including with the marketplace. It succumbed to political forces
pseudosaid 2 days ago [-]
It didnt happen because Intuit lobbied against it like their business model was in existential crisis. The canary is that inappropriate power imbalances will ruin even the most hard one feats of human collaboration and effort. Its like learning about why jaywalking became a crime, or why recycling is a consumer’s respobsibility. Edit: So I'm about as original as a model can be as I went to go fact check myself and I basically cliff noted an AI summary for yall pre-gen.
margalabargala 2 days ago [-]
I doubt this is the reason. In this particular case, it's more likely that a company such as Turbotax paid a sufficient sum of money to the President or one of his family members in exchange for this consideration.
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
Congress authorized a study, not a full blown system, or even a working prototype. No taxpayers should have ever been allowed to use it to file a tax return.
Despite Congress appropriating only $15M to do the study, the program managed to blow through at least $41M, likely more.[1] This included advertising costs in some states to encourage taxpayers to use the system.
This would be like your boss asking you to send him an email about the pros and cons of adding a feature, and you going and implementing the feature, pushing it to production, and then asking customers for feedback on it.
Whether or not the feature was a success is 100% irrelevant. That’s not how things should be done. We are a nation of laws, and even if the program was a smashing success, there needs to be accountability.
> No taxpayers should have ever been allowed to use it to file a tax return.
I see why blowing too much money on the study is a problem. Though this needs to be compared against the norms around this kind of thing. If we wanted these limits to be strict, we would make it actually impossible to spend more.
But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem.
"We believe the best way to get this information would be to build a prototype and see how popular it will be" makes perfect sense to me.
MisterMower 1 days ago [-]
> this needs to be compared against the norms around this kind of thing
Because other government programs waste money, it must be okay that this one did too?
Congress put $15M in the Inflation Reduction Act for the purpose of a study. If they wanted to spend $41M or $400M, don't you think they would have written that number into the law instead?
> But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem
I don't know how to say this in any other way: it's because it was not authorized by law. That reason alone is sufficient.
This attitude of "well it was for a good cause, I suppose we can just ignore the law in this instance" is the root of many of our problems in this country. At its root it's really just "the ends justify the means" thinking.
Today it may be something you support. But tomorrow it's deportations or illegal recess appointments or unlawful searches and seizures. When you allow certain laws to be enforced and others to be ignored you set the stage for tyranny.
In many ways we are reaping the harvest of this lax attitude toward how laws are executed in this country. I hope this program serves as an object lesson in why complying with the law may seem tedious but is actually the bedrock of our constitutional order.
Kinrany 18 hours ago [-]
> Because other government programs waste money, it must be okay that this one did too?
No, but it's unfair to single out one program when they all do that.
> This attitude of "well it was for a good cause [...]"
That is not my argument. I don't see why a study cannot include a product being built and used by the public. Unless there's a legal argument where "study" is a specific legal term, not "we'll do things to learn about this topic".
cyberax 2 days ago [-]
> We are a nation of laws
Have you considered doing stand-up comedy?
LastTrain 2 days ago [-]
> We are a nation of laws
Yeah sorry but to be out here defending the actions of this administration while trotting out that phrase, you either have no self awareness or are a craven liar. Nation of laws SMH…
solarkraft 2 days ago [-]
Then there is that to study
pudgywalsh 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
pas 2 days ago [-]
let's say a non-profit hosts it somewhere can people use it to file their taxes for free?
Defenestresque 2 days ago [-]
A fascinating , yet sad, post-mortem.
Anyone wheeling and dealing along in the shadows between "politics" and "deliverable, functioning product" should read it. Or, I guess, paste the link into Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to summarize for them, lessons learned in bullet points and how it could apply to $their_job.
But I'm generally a weirdo who finds these kinds of reports fascinating, so don't purely go on my recommendation.
speerer 2 days ago [-]
Just an aside on the design rather than the content:
I was wondering for a while about the greenish and yellow bars on the margins of the page, but I'm pretty sure that those are padding to make the document work well on both US letter paper and A4 at the same time! The text area is A4 proportions, so if it were printed, zoomed to size on that paper, the sidebars would simply disappear.
No doubt this is a common technique that I'm just noticing for the first time.
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
The biggest issue with Direct File is the conflict of interest created by having the government who benefits from your tax payment also prepare the return for you.
Given the massive amount of IRS shenanigans over the years, it is easy to imagine certain groups unfavored by the government conveniently being led to file returns that cause them to miss out on subsidies they are actually eligible for, or to pay higher taxes based on filing their return in correct but unfavorable ways resulting in higher tax payments than necessary.
This risk is particularly high given that the program was intended for and marketed to low income filers who typically rely on their tax preparer as an advocate to ensure their tax payment is as low as legally possible.
As other comments have mentioned, the program also exceeded statutory authority. Congress authorized the IRS to study a direct file system, not implement one on a permanent basis. It is a good thing when our government is restrained after it oversteps legal boundaries.
This is especially true in the case of this program because it was being intentionally implemented on a massive scale in order to make it politically unpopular to shut down. A program that allows 10% of all tax payers in 25 states is obviously much more than a study.
hvb2 2 days ago [-]
> The biggest issue with Direct File is the conflict of interest created by having the government who benefits from your tax payment also prepare the return for you.
The amount of distrust in the USA is truly bonkers. What about the conflict of interest for the tax preparers, actual companies with profit as a motive wanting nothing more than to pretend it's all complicated.
As the document says, the government prefilling your return is commonplace in many countries. And it actually makes sense when they already have the data. Less work for the taxpayer, fewer mistakes resulting in fewer cases in need of investigation. Everyone wins here...
> This risk is particularly high given that the program was intended for and marketed to low income filers who typically rely on their tax preparer as an advocate to ensure their tax payment is as low as legally possible.
Over 30% of returns don't even owe federal taxes [1]. So when they file, and get a $1000 credit, it's really crappy to then have to pay $100 or so of that to a tax preparer.
> to make it politically unpopular to shut down
So the government doing something people like is... Bad?
Until you’ve had an IRS audit you truly can’t even imagine. I hope you never have a similar experience that knocks those rose tinted glasses off your head.
A buddy of mine took the home office deduction for a few years in the late 1990’s. He read the law and was in compliance with it. The IRS audited him and claimed he was not eligible. He lawyered up and spent thousands of dollars fighting it. He was ultimately successful, but his subsequent distrust of government was entirely merited.
Tax preparers at least have incentives to compete with each other on price and quality of service. They also often guarantee return accuracy. Tax law can be complicated and there are legitimate questions about how to treat certain kinds of income or expenses. These are questions you really don’t want the government making unilaterally.
And if you really hate tax preparers, you can always file a paper return for free using forms available from the post office, as my father and I do to this day. And honestly, if a taxpayer doesn’t owe federal taxes, submitting a paper form 1040 is the simplest route. Slap your W2 income on there and fill the rest out and you’re done. No fees, just a stamp and envelope.
A direct file system will inevitably morph into a black box where the government tells you an arbitrary tax liability amount and 99% of taxpayers just accept it at face value and pay it. You really see no problems with such a system?
Arguments of the form “everybody else is doing it, can’t be that bad” are not compelling, in my opinion. Slavery was common everywhere for a long time. I suppose that made it a good thing?
The government entrenches its power by implementing programs that hand out benefits at the cost of your liberty. Those benefits are always popular, and the loss of liberty is only realized after it is far to late to ever get it back.
But hey, the government claims people saved an average of $240 a year and 6 hours of tax preparation time because of this system. What a smashing success!
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
How would direct file lead to more audits? The same documents end up with the government either way. And no, the argument that its just a slippery slope to a non working system isnt an argument at all. Thats a near religious belief.
Mind you, direct file did not prevent third-party filing.
MisterMower 1 days ago [-]
I'm not saying a direct file system would lead to more audits. I simply shared the story of my friend to illustrate how abusive and underhanded the government is capable of being, and to make the point that under a direct file system these same people would be completing your tax return for you.
All slopes are slippery. The question is to what degree, and my contention is that this slope is far more slippery than most people want to admit. You are welcome to make the argument that the slope is actually not that steep, but you're going to have to bring more to the table than the insult that my concerns are no more than "religious belief."
hvb2 2 days ago [-]
TLDR, this is not for you. No one is forcing you to use it. The people that did use it were apparently happy with it.
> Tax preparers at least have incentives to compete with each other on price and quality of service. They also often guarantee return accuracy.
> He lawyered up and spent thousands of dollars fighting it. He was ultimately successful, but his subsequent distrust of government was entirely merited.
So your friend filed himself, or his tax preparer didn't back him up?
The US tax code is very complicated and claiming deductions seems to be a national sport. I'm sure there are plenty of deductions taken that might not be illegal but questionable.
However, your example here wouldn't be what this service was aimed at to begin with. If the bottom 90% or so of filers can use this because their incomes are simple (paycheck, some savings, standard deduction) why would that need to be done by a tax preparer?
> You really see no problems with such a system?
I do not because it won't be a black box anymore than your tax preparer is a black box. Again, think of this as for the simple returns. If you claim standard deduction and have only a W2, it will only be a black box if you're unable to do the simplest of math.
> Arguments of the form “everybody else is doing it, can’t be that bad” are not compelling, in my opinion.
Counter argument being, if the rest of the world does it differently, shouldn't that mean there might be some reflection needed?
For your slavery example, that's why it's no longer a thing?
> The government entrenches its power by implementing programs that hand out benefits at the cost of your liberty. Those benefits are always popular, and the loss of liberty is only realized after it is far to late to ever get it back.
I'm going to make a guess that you've never lived outside of the US.
> But hey, the government claims people saved an average of $240 a year and 6 hours of tax preparation time because of this system. What a smashing success!
If it means that the lowest incomes now get their $1000 dollar credit and get to keep it, I think that's a lot of money for a lot of them.
MisterMower 1 days ago [-]
> No one is forcing you to use it.
No one is forcing me to use such a system today, but I was also assured that if I liked my doctor I could keep my doctor, and that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You are naive if you think the government will act altruistically.
> I do not because it won't be a black box anymore than your tax preparer is a black box
How can you say that with any amount of certainty?
Congress asked the IRS to conduct a feasibility study and instead they went and created a full blown system to accept and process tax returns, in violation of what they were statutorily required to do, spending millions beyond what they were legally authorized to.
If they can't even do the study correctly and in good faith, what assurance does anyone have that they won't build a system that will be used to abuse taxpayers? If the government wants me to trust them, then they should act in a trustworthy manner.
> I'm going to make a guess that you've never lived outside of the US.
I'm going to make a guess that you've never studied history.
> If it means that the lowest incomes now get their $1000 dollar credit and get to keep it, I think that's a lot of money for a lot of them.
I too like it when poor people get money they're entitled to. But that doesn't mean we need to bend over backwards and give the IRS massive new powers to accomplish that goal.
There are tradeoffs involved that need to be seriously considered when giving an agency that has consistently abused its power for at least a century more power in the service of that goal. [1]
> You are naive if you think the government will act altruistically.
It's funny how a large swath of America in their opinions has already given up on the concept of America. Government by the people, for the people?
> How can you say that with any amount of certainty?
Because direct file is just the messenger. If you don't understand what's in it, then who prepared it didn't matter does it? You put as much trust in you tax preparer as in direct file.
The only way this is not true is when you actually review everything they've done, at which point you might have done it yourself. And let's be honest, with the US tax system, you need to be an expert to file anything nonstandard.
> But that doesn't mean we need to bend over backwards and give the IRS massive new powers to accomplish that goal.
They don't get new powers through this, it's just another option for filing.
So with this being killed, you can sleep better at night and the lower income people will suffer as they can go back to being overcharged by tax preparers for filing the simplest of returns. I guess that sums up murica pretty well.
> has consistently abused its power for at least a century more power in the service of that goal. [1]
That's mostly presidents and their party abusing the executive branch, although it's all allegations.
You must really like this current administration, really raising the bar on what retaliation is.
cucumber3732842 2 days ago [-]
> I hope you never have a similar experience that knocks those rose tinted glasses off your head.
Buddy of mine, circa 2020. He owns a small plumbing supply business in the upper midwest. Think like fleet of a dozen box trucks. Friday night ~7pm (so well after close of business) he's at the warehouse doing stuff. Notices a couple guys outside slinking around his row of parked trucks, looks like they're stealing fuel. He and the other couple guys with him goes out to see wtf. Yelling match ensues, guns are drawn on both sides. It's a couple guys barely speak english, have no badges, no papers, look like they could be uber drivers. Police show up and mediate the yelling, phone calls get made, etc. Turns out, these guys are like an Nth layer subcontractor of the IRS who are dipping his fuel tanks to check for red diesel because the N-<whatever>th layer subcontractor decided that this business needed to be checked for that particular sort of tax evasion.
He's been audited every year since then. I guess someone must have set the "screw this guy" flag in the database.
No this doesn't have anything to do with 3rd party filing software.
blfr 2 days ago [-]
They lost 18 months in decision-making, compressing their development timeline.
I am not seeing it happen yet but I wonder if this will be the main AI SDLC improvement: you can analyze a ton of docs, build prototypes smoothing the decisions for non-technical stakeholders, and compress development so much that it might actually absorb all the other inefficiencies.
2 days ago [-]
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Very basic analysis by da bot says it costs the government roughly 226$ per filing vs a private company 40$.
Would love to hear the opposite argument but the point I first saw online is saying the same, that it cost more tax payer money to run than it saved those tax payers.
Scale problem? Open to hearing the opposite argument.
ronbenton 2 days ago [-]
It was a pilot and was open to a small subset of taxpayers. It was intentionally not benefiting from economy of scale to incrementally deliver value rather than probably badly trying to hit every use case the first go around.
The cost per filing criticism is generally posited in bad faith, by people who don’t understand incremental software delivery, or both
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Ok but why even make it? 40$ per taxpayer filing vs the government doing it with our taxes.
I doubt it's going to beat private industry's price.
It's not a bad faith argument though. If it cost the gov 40$ or it cost a tax payer 40$ what's the difference?
mixmastamyk 2 days ago [-]
Why should a malicious third party have our financial records? Why would a third party know filing reqs better than the IRS?
They already know the data anyway. Other countries have done this for decades already, cheaply.
Arainach 2 days ago [-]
Your "226" includes the one-time initial development costs. You're comparing $40/yr in perpetuity versus something like $220 once, $6/yr after that - and I suspect the actual costs of running the system are far lower.
bhawks 2 days ago [-]
If you read further you'll see that in 2025 they spent $40 million additional and served 300000 people - so $130/user?
The metrics for this project don't sell it - the politics do. You'll either love it or hate it.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Again, assuming the government can outcompete on price vs private industry.
It's a real point but I don't know an example of that happening elsewhere. The US government outcompeting private industry is exactly why communism doesn't work
tene80i 2 days ago [-]
You’ve already received the answer to this. The platform was already built. There’s every reason to think it would require only very small operating costs from now on, whereas a company has every reason to maintain profit margins with a fixed price.
Arainach 2 days ago [-]
The government outcompetes the private sector in almost everything it gets into. Healthcare, mail delivery, fire relief, and far more. The private sector is all about slashing quality and raising prices.
hnlmorg 2 days ago [-]
It’s not communism. It’s literally how most of the rest of the developed world file their taxes.
Given taxes are a government system, and one that’s complicated enough that you shouldn’t expect the average tax payer to need to understand it nor have the money to afford an accountant, it’s actually insane to argue that this should be operated in the private space.
This is exactly the kind of thing the government should operate in capitalist societies.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Most of the developed world aint doin so hot
hnlmorg 2 days ago [-]
Those who fund their government branches are generally doing better than those who are not. America being the prime recent example of this.
And those who’s government places policies which benefit their voters generally have a better quality of life than those who accept lobbying, and corruption dictate government policies.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
You saying america isn't doing well?
Arainach 2 days ago [-]
America is doing awful. Income inequality, oppression of minorities, visible corruption, the wholesale destruction of the scientific and policy infrastructure that made it a world leader, abandoning important technologies such as renewable energy, destroying the social safety net....should I go on?
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Well there's the root of the disagreement. I view it as the opposite, that the US is setting itself up to be the dominant world power for the next 100 years. Energy, space and AI if US doesn't fumble those we're looking at a golden age the likes of which we've never seen.
Also fyi the US science budget has literally not changed. So luckily the orange man can kick and scream but our budget for science isn't going away (not to say it's not disrupted).
hnlmorg 23 hours ago [-]
SpaceX needed to happen because US had fallen behind the rest of the international community. And the USs advantage in AI shrinks year on year; presently estimated at only 6 months ahead.
Also, all these technologies are owned by corporate entities, many of which are ran by exactly the kind of people America is trying to deport (ie not birth citizens). So who’s to say they wouldn’t just move their tech to Europe or china is they were to outbid the US?
Meanwhile the middle and lower classes are getting poorer.
None of this screams prosperity. All you’ve done is traded your national wealth for words of good faith from a small subset of known liars. And by all independent accounts, it’s already costing the US billions.
Yes Europe is struggling too. But a large part of that is because we depended on a US alliance and you can see Europe shifting away from that in favour of building its own sovereign technologies. It will be hard, but if successful that would be the final nail in the coffin for America.
Just remember that Russia used to be a superpower on equal technology footing as America. North and South Korea used to be equally prosperous. Countries can fall behind significantly when managed by egotistical and corrupt despots. Which is ostensibly who you have in charge of America right now.
Other countries, when in the position America is now, are usually faced with two options:
1. Spend decades rebuilding international trust
2. Go to war, ultimately lose the war because it’s basically you vs the rest of the world, and then fall back to option 1 after a suitably humiliating defeat and millions of lives lost from all sides and critical infrastructure and manufacturing destroyed.
It very much feels like America is going for option 2. So I wouldn’t be trusting your long term plans to the orange buffoon if were you. The best case scenario is this downwards spiral is a blip. The worst case scenario is you’ll drag the rest of the glob into another world war.
johnsmith1840 12 hours ago [-]
On basically all metrics the US is most prosperous country on earth. Our middle class turned into upper class. It's a pretty bad argument when the poorest part of the country are richer than basically anywhere else in the world. The only argument I could entertain on this line of thought is that the US has reached it's peak (today) and may decline. That atleast has merit because there's a good argument the AI bubble popping could lead to a chain reaction causing long term decline. But saying the US has currently declined is crazy when seeing the previous 2 years. Maybe the argument is that the craziness the US has been doing is "burning" its potential for short term gaibs for long term damage. Totally possible but there really isn't an argument to be had that the US is currently some weak or lost cause as of now.
EU is struggling for a lot of reasons the US was supporting the bad design. I do believe it's a kind of learned helplessness though and youre right. If EU stopped social spending reduced regulations rebuilt their military they could actually make a come back in like 15yrs. Sounds like a long time but that actually is really good and their recent discussions on actually rebuilding their militaries is a glimmer of hope. But the greatness of europe like it was in the past? As of now a totally lost cause and that's cultural. Until the current generation dies and people who want to see europe be a real power again come up there's no way. France would be my bet on this front.
An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost" the only question to ask is wether US is currently in it's 1700 British empire mode or 1940 one.
Everyone has said how the us is failing for literally my entire life now. They intensified in 2016 with oramge man's first term and continued to now. But again, in realistic terms the US is not less than it was a decade ago and in obvious terms it's in a better position today since the 80s.
The most obvious example is energy. Middle east and venuzuela were basically light advesaries. Saudi was leaning towards china. Now? US essentially controls the majority of oil in the entire world. Nobody else can put a fleet of ships on the output of ME like that. Sure Iran can commit terrorism on civilians but nobody can drop an army anywhere in the world like the US. Our arab allies have heavily realigned to the US. Our oil is the highest output ever. Venuzuela is ours so in 15yrs so is the next middle east of oil output.
So again. World energy dominance for the next 50yrs minimum. We have the largest datacenter capacity by a stupidly large margin. Possibly in 20yrs a complete monopoly on industrial space flight. Those 3 things together to me are a near garauntee dominance. Even one of those things could be enough to stay a super power but all of them? All at once? That's a wild combo. No other country even has one of those (i suppose ME countries with oil is the only one).
We'll see how Iran turns out though. That would be the chink in the output above. State sponsored civilian terrorism is a hard thing to stop but they have succeeded in aligning every arab ally against them pretty good.
hnlmorg 10 hours ago [-]
> The only argument I could entertain on this line of thought is that the US has reached it's peak (today) and may decline.
That’s literally the point we are discussing ;)
> An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost"
Yeah, Britain definitely falls into that category too. But it’s also worth noting that the empire was literally build from conquest and exploitation. Which brings me back to my previous comment about war.
Arainach 1 days ago [-]
America's dominance in science and technology (and art, and other fields) was due to an atmosphere where the smartest and best people from around the world wanted to come here. We have actively worked to drive them away and broken the processes in ways that can't be fixed with the stroke of a pen.
Our economic influence was based around being a stabilizing force and soft power - both of which we have destroyed. The world was willing to forgive us for 2016-2020, but now they know we are not to be trusted - that we will abandon and publicly abuse our allies no matter how close, that our policy changes based on whichever dictator last talked to Trump, and they know that the other two wings of our government are spineless and powerless sycophants who will never put a stop to any of it. They are forming trade relationships and infrastructure without us, and we will never get back our preferred status.
We have given up generational advantages and are not set up to be a dominant power in anything. We are an empire in accelerating decline.
johnsmith1840 1 days ago [-]
As we literally just invented cheap space travel and AI?
Massive energy stores, massive military, massive datacenters.
I would not want to bet against that
Arainach 1 days ago [-]
Outdated energy sources, no manufacturing base, and expensive AI that's barely ahead of cheap open source Chinese models.
A massive military that's burning billions and depleting its reserves proving that it can't even protect ships from Iran.
So. Much. Winning.
johnsmith1840 12 hours ago [-]
Outdated... Let me know when planes fly on solar, shipping containers on wind and your chair isn't made of plastic.
Drones have made terrorism hard to stop in iran. But it's not over let's see where it goes. The positives are that Iran has effectivelt made lifelong allies of our arab neighbors. They used to lean toward china but now china is supplying weapons to the country bombing their people. Additionally israel and arabs may actually normalize diplomacy between each other as a result which would also be a massive win.
If US can collapse Iran we're looking at it being the strongest it has ever been and likely the strongest power to have ever existed. If not then it's roughly british empire at its peakish as of now.
You mix that with Russia getting it's asses kicked and every single country around china massively aligning with US and that's a recipe for success.
EU honestly is the downside here they are upset but also the sad truth is europe is no longer a world power. A regional one at best.
You could argue that america will BEGIN to decline as the recent policies take effect but as of now really the only negative is we don't do enough social spending and our supply chains aren't secure enough. Let's see how EU does over time if they are forced to build their own military again and population collapse hits their tax base that social spending is gonna get argentina like real fast.
vincnetas 2 days ago [-]
Is this fixed cost per filling, or does it include cost of developing the system? I somehow doubt that for all Americans to fill taxes it would cost 6.5b$ (163x40)
I think its like building a bridge analogy, when it costs you to use ferry only 0.01% of price of the bridge. But when its built its essentially free and ferry goes out of business.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Yes that I'd like to hear. It's possible it would be cheaper over time if we assume tax filling is artificially held at a higher price by companies but competition says that shouldn't be true.
But also, the "bridge" is built? There are tons of companies already doing this.
edoceo 2 days ago [-]
They made it to start somewhere. How to start without starting? Just like when a startup has crappy unit-economics, then refines and scales to better.
Also, where can I get tax software for $40? Even freetaxusa isn't free.
kg 2 days ago [-]
This ignores the time cost of having to find the right private company to file your taxes (everyone loves price shopping!) and manually funnel all your data into it, data the government probably already has. Tax prep costs me at least an entire day of my time every year.
P.S. When citing that you had AI do a basic analysis of something, specifying what you analyzed and which AI you used would be nice so other people can reproduce it or dig deeper.
x3haloed 2 days ago [-]
Even if that's true, there's no reason it can't be streamlined over time. The true scaling problem is profit. The government has an interest in accurate tax collection -- not collecting a service fee.
fragmede 2 days ago [-]
The government inefficiency is in doing the small pilot program and using those costs as per filing costs. Of course it's going to cost more if you only do a handful of them. The first iPhone cost a hojillion dollars to make, but Apple sells them for $1,000 and make a ton of money at that price point because they've made millions of them. This is so true for government spending that the shipyard building aircraft carriers did a press release begging congress to buy two at once because it would be cheaper than buying one and then waiting a long time and then buying a second one anyway.
Kinda a hard argument to say the government can do something cheaper than private industry.
forestrywat 2 days ago [-]
Governments regularly do things cheaper than private industry. And regularly do things more expensively.
Turns out, governments can be efficient and run things well. You just have to tune the incentive structure correctly.
(Aside, I don't care about cheaply as an axis nearly much as I care about "for the benefit of many". I'd take expensive programs that help everyone, every time.)
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
What do they do cheaper?
t098i3 2 days ago [-]
Public transit is a great example. Pretty much every attempt to privatize transit worldwide has resulted in, if not failure and subsequent deprivatization, at least higher prices and worse service for the people using the service.
The interstate highway system, which replaced a complex system of partially privately owned roads, is another.
In most countries, healthcare is another great example. And arguably education as well - public schooling produces generally pretty good results worldwide for not that much money per student, and outside the US, higher education is often public and incredible value for money.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
US public transit is a finacial disaster far beyond any other country.
Road maintenance is normally cheaper/faster with private.
Healthcare is a can of worms but you could be right. The real problem with public health is what happens when these gov can't afford it anymore. US is likely in the wrong now but I want to see the results 50yrs from now when social spending cannot keep up with rising costs and decreasing taxes in EU (population collapse).
forestrywat 2 days ago [-]
Post delivery. You can send a letter anywhere in the us for less than a dollar.
Broadband. Look at municipal broadband in Chattanooga. EPB is cheap and offers high quality service.
Health care. Typically socialized systems are cheaper. Medicare pays one tenth the administrative costs private health insurance does.
Insurance. National flood insurance for instance simply isn't offered privately because private insurers charge so much.
Loans, in particular student loans. Private loans are so expensive relative to government ones.
Transit. I use the bus and the train when I'm not biking. It costs me $3 to take a 60 minute train to the airport. It costs me $120 to take a 45 minute Uber. Trains are capable of managing stadium traffic, commute traffic, I can put my bike on board. They are clean and safe.
vincnetas 2 days ago [-]
Would you like to see how private industry would handle city water system, and how much subscriptions would cost? They probably could do it cheaper, but they would charge the hell out of the end consumer as profit. Because thats the idea of private industry - profit.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Not saying private do everything but if they already are and it's cheaper why screw with it?
Charging a consumer or taxing them, what's the difference
vincnetas 2 days ago [-]
Take the bridge analogy. Why screw with the ferry business and build a bridge?
fitsumbelay 2 days ago [-]
da troof soshul bot?
the billion dollar tax prep industrial complex as a group spends the most lobbying dollars on tax policy -- in particular, suppressing any effort eliminate or even reduce filing complexity -- and lobbying ops like theirs don't happen because their service's value to tax payers speaks for itself
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
I mean it's right there in the price? Not doing rocket science analysis here.
I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that? Government naturally makes all sorts of stuff overly complicated all on its own.
fitsumbelay 2 days ago [-]
> I mean it's right there in the price? Not doing rocket science analysis here.
That's been answered in at least one other reply
> I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that?
I was not a fan of Direct File (I think it could have been much better!) but it was objectively in the success bucket:
- ~$50M all-in to build which sounds egregious but is small for a government project
- mostly good outcomes
- ~4y to pilot which also sounds egregious for a single moderate-complexity web app but again is practically lightspeed for a government project
People blame it getting shuttered on Trump but this is both a misread and a fundamental misunderstanding of how the government operates. The entire federal government is deliberately paced and primarily driven by a combination of politicals, regulation, budget, Congressional policymaking, and program staffing. The hammer on this was always going to fall,
[1] Congress has maintained a "buy over build" policy since literally the Cold War. Ironically the first policy here (1965) was to buy computers from ADP instead of custom-building them. The most impactful "buy commercial" policy (1996) was also IT focused. This was literally codified in several parts of the FAR, and if we're going to be blaming admins, the Trump admin has actually weakened the FAR with the RFO and would be on the other side of this issue.
[2] This policy is also the foundation upon which IT contractors like Palantir are built, if you've ever wondered "wtf do they do" they are a commercial contractor that builds custom software for government. So agencies get their custom stuff, Congress is happy they bought commercial, and the only loser is the taxpayer who overpaid a factor of 3-5x. To their credit, Palantir is a huge improvement on the status quo, because they charge by use cases and outcomes, whereas traditional SI's operate on a staffing model and a combination of high wrap rates and perverse incentives with billable hours creates horrible outcomes and ballooning costs. Anyways, there are a lot of commercial vendors that this work "could have" gone to and didn't. It would also have been really easy for them to shop this out because this was shaped really well for GSA MAS or STARS III.
[3] When you build things internally with e.g. 18F, one agency is typically the "customer" and pays the other agency (afaik 18F program is nested under the White House). So this really sucks when they walk away; 18F earned a reputation for building things through pilot, blogging about it, puffing their cheeks in the media, sending a bill to the agency, and then running off to the next shiny thing as engineers tend to do. As an agency you save a bit of money initially but now you are left with something nobody knows how to maintain, you have to hire contractors to do it, which by nature has to be a staffing contract, and then the wrap rate alone wrecks you. This happens all the time with commercial vendors, usually when they are outsized or don't get renewed, but obviously upsetting when it happens internally.
[4] The author of this piece was part of the team and so as you'd expect this piece is exceptionally biased. The reality is that the IRS self-assessed the maintenance as low and everybody who reports on this treats this as fact when it was not a GAO estimate, which is what carries any actual weight, it was internal IRS estimates and a single independent that mainly assessed call center volume not the actual system. Not only does their reputation precede them here, but their own spend on buildout (~$30M on contractors to help) contradicts the low maintenance narrative. We may never see a GAO estimate here, but the contract would almost certainly go out to TrussWorks, all government contracting data is public and you can look up for yourself how much TrussWorks typically charges the IRS whether directly or thru ATI's vehicles as subawards.
ronbenton 2 days ago [-]
I think this is well said but also would have appreciated if you disclosed that you are a government vendor and are susceptible to your own biases. Would be only reasonable given that you call the author out on this. But the difference is she actually discloses her interest.
tonetheman 2 days ago [-]
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rexpop 2 days ago [-]
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chocolol 2 days ago [-]
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johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
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margalabargala 2 days ago [-]
> All I said was that the cost was higher for tax payers than private industry.
Right, yes, generally government services have higher taxpayer costs than private industry that isn't funded by taxpayers...
The question, which has not been answered, is: were equal numbers of people to use private vs IRS services, which would at that scale cost more per filing?
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Yeah that was my point and question. It was more expensive but I was wondering if it was just a scale problem.
Kinda weird someone can delete comments like that on here.
Your comment wasn't deleted. Are you sure you don't have it minimized? (The minus sign next to it.)
margalabargala 2 days ago [-]
Their earlier comment got flagged to death and they missed it when they looked.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Nah it only returned after my comment here
forestrywat 2 days ago [-]
You sure it wasn't database coherency or some other issue on the tech side? Comments are basically never ever deleted here. Even the most vile racist or ableist or homophobic comments just get flagged to death and left up.
johnsmith1840 2 days ago [-]
Maybe
Surac 2 days ago [-]
I never would have thought that a irs software would be called direct fire. What about indirect fire? I think of direct and indirect fire in context of artillery
travisr 2 days ago [-]
It’s direct file.
gradus_ad 2 days ago [-]
Eh, government should not be in the business of maintaining digital infrastructure, regardless of how capable it might be. As much of it as possible should be contracted out to 3rd parties.
wbillingsley 2 days ago [-]
Profit motives in infrastructure are a bad idea. See Thames Water in the UK, for instance. It always introduces a perverse incentive where if the company in control of the infrastructure can extract an extra million in profit by making everything less efficient and costing everyone else involved a billion, it's still in that company's interest to do so.
This is a prime example of that. H&R Block, etc, benefit from there not being direct file by around $3bn in revenue or around $750m in profit. Rough sums on the time saved by direct file if everyone used it is 8h * average wage * taxpayers, which seems to be approximately $44bn. i.e. in axing direct file, it has "created" $3bn in economic activity to the private infrastructure-owner (the intermediary between you and filing your return), but at the cost of $44bn in lost time & therefore lost activity (the other things you could have been doing) to the rest of the economy.
Infrastructure is not the economy. Infrastructure is the thing the economy runs on top of / has to use. Given that it is the role of government to govern the economy, it is the role of government to ensure that the infrastructure is running well (be the custodian of the infrastructure).
doginasuit 2 days ago [-]
Arguing the other side, digital infrastructure shouldn't be such a complicated domain that it is out of the reach of governments. This is the authority we trust to build our roads, water/sewer system, electric grid, and virtually every other meaningful physical infrastructure. Why should digital infrastructure be out of bounds?
The only alternative is inserting a third party, one that has full access to all your financial information, an extraordinary level of trust for a private sector that has shown unrelenting loyalty to investors over customers. That shouldn't be necessary for the average filer, assuming a bare minimum of competence, like one might assume for the only country to put a human on the moon and bring them safely home.
charcircuit 2 days ago [-]
>This is the authority we trust to build our roads and virtually every other meaningful physical infrastructure in our civic life.
Trusting the government to be able to do something is not the same them actually doing it, nor is it the same as them doing it well. With roads the people using them have much more incentive in maintaining them than the government. What a person experiences driving down the road everyday is just a statistic to the government.
doginasuit 2 days ago [-]
How about the electric grid and our water/sewer systems, is it reasonable to trust the same entity that manages those vital services to build a basic web form?
> Trusting the government to be able to do something is not the same them actually doing it, nor is it the same as them doing it well.
You are absolutely right. My point is not that the government has proven its competency in this domain, it is whether we should expect it.
charcircuit 2 days ago [-]
>we should expect it.
The monetary incentives for the most governments don't exist to run projects efficiently, so I don't think it is realistic to expect it. The government can just print money or steal money via taxes to cover up inefficiencies. And since government bureaucracy tends to force things to move at a glacial pace that will be reflected in how it executes projects.
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
This is so wrong I literally don't know where to start.
Governments have as much incentive as anyone else to save money. I shouldn't even need to type this but raising taxes is unpopular and tends to cause people to get voted out of office.
People need to stop repeating thise weird talking points about "the government" and its incentives. It's a big, complixated entity made up of literally millions of people all of whom have different motivations and incentives and non-government employees affect those not just in the super obvious way by voting but by every interaction we have with anyone who works there.
charcircuit 2 days ago [-]
>raising taxes is unpopular and tends to cause people to get voted out of office.
This is missing the point. If you got rid of taxes altogether it would reveal what really is being propped up tax money as opposed to actually being valuable enough to exist on its own.
>complixated entity made up of literally millions of people all of whom have different motivations and incentives
Which is why it's important to get the big incentives correct. Otherwise one of these actors will waste resources since expecting people to do the right thing without incentives does not scale.
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
> With roads the people using them have much more incentive in maintaining them
Are you implying the random people driving down a road also do the maintenance on it? What? How is this any different from literally any other government service?
charcircuit 2 days ago [-]
>Are you implying the random people driving down a road also do the maintenance on it?
I'm implying that the people and businesses along a private road pay another company to come in and do maintenance. Unlike government modes you don't have to wait until whenever the government feels like fixing road.
doginasuit 2 days ago [-]
We actually have public roads that are built and maintained by private companies, they are toll roads. If you don't mind paying separate tolls everywhere you travel, this would be a fine solution.
charcircuit 1 days ago [-]
There are other ways to fund it than tolls for using it. Similar to how restraints have free parking on their property despite paid parking being a thing.
zephen 2 days ago [-]
Do you think the government should allow electronic filing of taxes?
Because if the government is going to accept returns electronically instead of through the physical mail, then it should accept them without requiring an intermediary.
Interestingly, it does this for corporations, but not for individuals.
Gee, I wonder why.
Personally, I think that (a) the government needs to have my PII to process my taxes, and that (b) having the government require me to also hand my PII to a third party in order to pay taxes is a big fucking security nightmare.
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
The electronic filing sites are available to "the public" both as a webform and as an api. They're just buried and never mentioned.
zephen 2 days ago [-]
No. They are fucking not.
The site that was killed was the IRS direct file site.
The webform is through the free file alliance, aka Turbotax and friends.
The API requires you to jump through a million hoops. Heaven help you if the reason you want to use the API is because you are behind on your taxes, because that will signal that you are not of good character.
Speaking of being behind on your taxes, you have to use paper for any but the last three years of returns anyway.
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
I was talking about free fillable forms, but when I did some research I learned its not actually owned by the irs. Now I'm confused.
zephen 2 days ago [-]
The confusion is deliberate.
The Republicans are trying to strangle the IRS and outsource everything.
The IRS, despite its many shortcomings, consistently tries to help people get their taxes filed.
So when the Republicans were in charge, and the IRS wanted to ensure that people could just fill out their forms, but the Republicans in congress wouldn't directly support filing through the IRS, the IRS came up with a workaround. It was a workaround both for them and for Turbotax et al, because it sort of acted like a pressure relief valve.
The workaround allowed people to file their taxes for free, so the IRS was, well maybe not happy, but certainly mollified. The workaround kinda sucked for the taxpayer experience, so Turbotax was happy. And the workaround was implemented by private companies rather than the US government, so the Republicans were happy.
But you definitely have to hand your data over to a third party to use this workaround -- effectively the same evil (cough, Turbotax, cough) party you were trying to avoid in the first place.
When the democrats were in charge, they effectively torpedoed the workaround with DirectFile, so of course when the Republicans got back in charge, they had to axe that.
By the way, you mentioned an API. Free file fillable forms does not have one. The only one I know of is the one that the tax program vendors use. Yes, it is publicly documented, but to use it you have to jump through a lot of regulatory hoops.
compiler-guy 2 days ago [-]
Explain your reasoning at least.
The government has to maintain some infrastructure to get this sort of thing done. Whether digital or analog. And if it contracts it out, it needs to oversee it. So no matter how it is done, the government has to pay.
NoDodgeQuestion 2 days ago [-]
Don't you care about the actual outcome at all? Even if the government does a better job, you still prefer a third-party organization?
denkmoon 2 days ago [-]
You could just light the money on fire instead and get the same result. Contractors routinely screw the tax payer. I once had a job in one of these third parties where the entire operation was effectively defrauding the tax payer by claiming 1hr jobs would take 40.
cuuupid 2 days ago [-]
You are absolutely correct, billable hours are perverse incentives and wrap rates border on predatory, but this status quo is Congressionally mandated and buy commercial as a policy is generally bipartisan.
socalgal2 2 days ago [-]
You seem to be under the impression that the government itself doesn't have the same problem. Government agencies often over bill, over budget. They have an incentive to pad everything and to never lower costs because their budget will be lowered otherwise. Contractors on the other hand, have to compete with other contractors so while they can try to over bill, if they bill too much the government has an incentive to switch contractors.
Neither system is perfect.
ipdashc 2 days ago [-]
> They have an incentive to pad everything and to never lower costs because their budget will be lowered otherwise.
Sure, but in the absence of widespread corruption (which until now, the US has been relatively clear of) they don't just get to go home with that budget in their pocket. They're still paid on standardized pay scales. Any extra budget still gets spent on the actual org or project, with the exception of random things like travel or office supplies.
The contractor takes home every extra dollar as profit.
I don't disagree at all that neither system is perfect, of course, but just saying.
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
> Neither system is perfect.
Yes, thats why people arguing that private companies are always better are so annoying.
You get that you're actually agreeing with this post right?
denkmoon 1 days ago [-]
Having also worked in a public position like that, there are so many dumb things that go on that didn't need to but the idea of pretending a 1hr job would take 40 would be unconscionable. 1hr jobs could routinely take 10 because of paperwork, approvals, etc (and same for my stupid bigcorp jobs), but not deliberately so they could bill more hours.
shepardrtc 2 days ago [-]
At exorbitant costs or lackluster execution, with plenty of campaign donations along the way
forestrywat 2 days ago [-]
Was direct file exorbitant expensive? Or lackluster? What about all the 18F work?
On the flip side, plenty of private companies are expensive and corrupt.
I think it's possible both can be good and both can be bad.
croes 2 days ago [-]
Direct File was a service not infrastructure
wredcoll 2 days ago [-]
We have such a long history of really famous examples of big, successful government mega projects: hoover dam, interstate highways, manhattan project, apollo program... even the freaking panama canal was a government project.
What happened to us?
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
Crazy environmental and labor regulations is what happened.
I wouldn’t class this IRS project as anywhere near the the magnitude of complexity or impact of the projects you mentioned though.
masklinn 2 days ago [-]
> Crazy environmental and labor regulations is what happened.
Mainland Europe has “crazy environmental and labour regulations” and manages to build cheaper and faster. So no, your pet hate is not the reason.
MisterMower 2 days ago [-]
When was the last time Europe built anything approaching the Hoover Dam, Manhattan Project, or the Panama Canal? You’re not serious, are you?
croes 2 days ago [-]
Counter-question, when was the last time Europe needed such environment damaging mega projects?
righthand 2 days ago [-]
Contracted out like the healthcare.gov original launch fiasco for the AHCA?
kwertyoowiyop 2 days ago [-]
Comments that start with “Eh” are a real turnoff.
timcobb 2 days ago [-]
> As much of it as possible should be contracted out to 3rd parties.
It's unusually well-written, providing lots of key details or dropping in relevant context without ever losing sight of the big picture and the looming deadlines. I expected to just read the executive summary and then skim the rest, but it held my attention the whole way through.
This is only a major epiphany to proponents of a US-based ideological current, and mostly the result of anti-communist cold war propaganda. The rest of the world is well aware that state projects can and do succeed more than they fail.
Something being mandated by Congress is no protection at times:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
(Or the Constitution for that matter it seems.)
This week, Bessent decided that the signature policy of the Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan effort to stymie cartels and foreign oligarchs, would not only be stopped, but they instructed FinCEN to delete all the records they've already collected.
Easily the most lawless gang of corrupt bureaucrats that have ever held office in the US.
https://thehill.com/business/6025347-treasury-repeals-benefi...
Meanwhile, Republican legislators are looking at the people responsible and *checks notes* ... rewarding them with powerful government jobs. [0]
[0] https://www.citizen.org/article/todd-blanche-the-epstein-fil...
Despite Congress appropriating only $15M to do the study, the program managed to blow through at least $41M, likely more.[1] This included advertising costs in some states to encourage taxpayers to use the system.
This would be like your boss asking you to send him an email about the pros and cons of adding a feature, and you going and implementing the feature, pushing it to production, and then asking customers for feedback on it.
Whether or not the feature was a success is 100% irrelevant. That’s not how things should be done. We are a nation of laws, and even if the program was a smashing success, there needs to be accountability.
1. https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/Report-Replacemen...
I see why blowing too much money on the study is a problem. Though this needs to be compared against the norms around this kind of thing. If we wanted these limits to be strict, we would make it actually impossible to spend more.
But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem.
"We believe the best way to get this information would be to build a prototype and see how popular it will be" makes perfect sense to me.
Because other government programs waste money, it must be okay that this one did too?
Congress put $15M in the Inflation Reduction Act for the purpose of a study. If they wanted to spend $41M or $400M, don't you think they would have written that number into the law instead?
> But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem
I don't know how to say this in any other way: it's because it was not authorized by law. That reason alone is sufficient.
This attitude of "well it was for a good cause, I suppose we can just ignore the law in this instance" is the root of many of our problems in this country. At its root it's really just "the ends justify the means" thinking.
Today it may be something you support. But tomorrow it's deportations or illegal recess appointments or unlawful searches and seizures. When you allow certain laws to be enforced and others to be ignored you set the stage for tyranny.
In many ways we are reaping the harvest of this lax attitude toward how laws are executed in this country. I hope this program serves as an object lesson in why complying with the law may seem tedious but is actually the bedrock of our constitutional order.
No, but it's unfair to single out one program when they all do that.
> This attitude of "well it was for a good cause [...]"
That is not my argument. I don't see why a study cannot include a product being built and used by the public. Unless there's a legal argument where "study" is a specific legal term, not "we'll do things to learn about this topic".
Have you considered doing stand-up comedy?
Yeah sorry but to be out here defending the actions of this administration while trotting out that phrase, you either have no self awareness or are a craven liar. Nation of laws SMH…
Anyone wheeling and dealing along in the shadows between "politics" and "deliverable, functioning product" should read it. Or, I guess, paste the link into Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to summarize for them, lessons learned in bullet points and how it could apply to $their_job.
But I'm generally a weirdo who finds these kinds of reports fascinating, so don't purely go on my recommendation.
I was wondering for a while about the greenish and yellow bars on the margins of the page, but I'm pretty sure that those are padding to make the document work well on both US letter paper and A4 at the same time! The text area is A4 proportions, so if it were printed, zoomed to size on that paper, the sidebars would simply disappear.
No doubt this is a common technique that I'm just noticing for the first time.
Given the massive amount of IRS shenanigans over the years, it is easy to imagine certain groups unfavored by the government conveniently being led to file returns that cause them to miss out on subsidies they are actually eligible for, or to pay higher taxes based on filing their return in correct but unfavorable ways resulting in higher tax payments than necessary.
This risk is particularly high given that the program was intended for and marketed to low income filers who typically rely on their tax preparer as an advocate to ensure their tax payment is as low as legally possible.
As other comments have mentioned, the program also exceeded statutory authority. Congress authorized the IRS to study a direct file system, not implement one on a permanent basis. It is a good thing when our government is restrained after it oversteps legal boundaries.
This is especially true in the case of this program because it was being intentionally implemented on a massive scale in order to make it politically unpopular to shut down. A program that allows 10% of all tax payers in 25 states is obviously much more than a study.
The amount of distrust in the USA is truly bonkers. What about the conflict of interest for the tax preparers, actual companies with profit as a motive wanting nothing more than to pretend it's all complicated.
As the document says, the government prefilling your return is commonplace in many countries. And it actually makes sense when they already have the data. Less work for the taxpayer, fewer mistakes resulting in fewer cases in need of investigation. Everyone wins here...
> This risk is particularly high given that the program was intended for and marketed to low income filers who typically rely on their tax preparer as an advocate to ensure their tax payment is as low as legally possible.
Over 30% of returns don't even owe federal taxes [1]. So when they file, and get a $1000 credit, it's really crappy to then have to pay $100 or so of that to a tax preparer.
> to make it politically unpopular to shut down
So the government doing something people like is... Bad?
1: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-incom...
A buddy of mine took the home office deduction for a few years in the late 1990’s. He read the law and was in compliance with it. The IRS audited him and claimed he was not eligible. He lawyered up and spent thousands of dollars fighting it. He was ultimately successful, but his subsequent distrust of government was entirely merited.
Tax preparers at least have incentives to compete with each other on price and quality of service. They also often guarantee return accuracy. Tax law can be complicated and there are legitimate questions about how to treat certain kinds of income or expenses. These are questions you really don’t want the government making unilaterally.
And if you really hate tax preparers, you can always file a paper return for free using forms available from the post office, as my father and I do to this day. And honestly, if a taxpayer doesn’t owe federal taxes, submitting a paper form 1040 is the simplest route. Slap your W2 income on there and fill the rest out and you’re done. No fees, just a stamp and envelope.
A direct file system will inevitably morph into a black box where the government tells you an arbitrary tax liability amount and 99% of taxpayers just accept it at face value and pay it. You really see no problems with such a system?
Arguments of the form “everybody else is doing it, can’t be that bad” are not compelling, in my opinion. Slavery was common everywhere for a long time. I suppose that made it a good thing?
The government entrenches its power by implementing programs that hand out benefits at the cost of your liberty. Those benefits are always popular, and the loss of liberty is only realized after it is far to late to ever get it back.
But hey, the government claims people saved an average of $240 a year and 6 hours of tax preparation time because of this system. What a smashing success!
Mind you, direct file did not prevent third-party filing.
All slopes are slippery. The question is to what degree, and my contention is that this slope is far more slippery than most people want to admit. You are welcome to make the argument that the slope is actually not that steep, but you're going to have to bring more to the table than the insult that my concerns are no more than "religious belief."
> Tax preparers at least have incentives to compete with each other on price and quality of service. They also often guarantee return accuracy.
> He lawyered up and spent thousands of dollars fighting it. He was ultimately successful, but his subsequent distrust of government was entirely merited.
So your friend filed himself, or his tax preparer didn't back him up?
The US tax code is very complicated and claiming deductions seems to be a national sport. I'm sure there are plenty of deductions taken that might not be illegal but questionable.
However, your example here wouldn't be what this service was aimed at to begin with. If the bottom 90% or so of filers can use this because their incomes are simple (paycheck, some savings, standard deduction) why would that need to be done by a tax preparer?
> You really see no problems with such a system?
I do not because it won't be a black box anymore than your tax preparer is a black box. Again, think of this as for the simple returns. If you claim standard deduction and have only a W2, it will only be a black box if you're unable to do the simplest of math.
> Arguments of the form “everybody else is doing it, can’t be that bad” are not compelling, in my opinion.
Counter argument being, if the rest of the world does it differently, shouldn't that mean there might be some reflection needed?
For your slavery example, that's why it's no longer a thing?
> The government entrenches its power by implementing programs that hand out benefits at the cost of your liberty. Those benefits are always popular, and the loss of liberty is only realized after it is far to late to ever get it back.
I'm going to make a guess that you've never lived outside of the US.
> But hey, the government claims people saved an average of $240 a year and 6 hours of tax preparation time because of this system. What a smashing success!
If it means that the lowest incomes now get their $1000 dollar credit and get to keep it, I think that's a lot of money for a lot of them.
No one is forcing me to use such a system today, but I was also assured that if I liked my doctor I could keep my doctor, and that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You are naive if you think the government will act altruistically.
> I do not because it won't be a black box anymore than your tax preparer is a black box
How can you say that with any amount of certainty?
Congress asked the IRS to conduct a feasibility study and instead they went and created a full blown system to accept and process tax returns, in violation of what they were statutorily required to do, spending millions beyond what they were legally authorized to.
If they can't even do the study correctly and in good faith, what assurance does anyone have that they won't build a system that will be used to abuse taxpayers? If the government wants me to trust them, then they should act in a trustworthy manner.
> I'm going to make a guess that you've never lived outside of the US.
I'm going to make a guess that you've never studied history.
> If it means that the lowest incomes now get their $1000 dollar credit and get to keep it, I think that's a lot of money for a lot of them.
I too like it when poor people get money they're entitled to. But that doesn't mean we need to bend over backwards and give the IRS massive new powers to accomplish that goal.
There are tradeoffs involved that need to be seriously considered when giving an agency that has consistently abused its power for at least a century more power in the service of that goal. [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_allegations_of_misuse_...
It's funny how a large swath of America in their opinions has already given up on the concept of America. Government by the people, for the people?
> How can you say that with any amount of certainty?
Because direct file is just the messenger. If you don't understand what's in it, then who prepared it didn't matter does it? You put as much trust in you tax preparer as in direct file.
The only way this is not true is when you actually review everything they've done, at which point you might have done it yourself. And let's be honest, with the US tax system, you need to be an expert to file anything nonstandard.
> But that doesn't mean we need to bend over backwards and give the IRS massive new powers to accomplish that goal.
They don't get new powers through this, it's just another option for filing.
So with this being killed, you can sleep better at night and the lower income people will suffer as they can go back to being overcharged by tax preparers for filing the simplest of returns. I guess that sums up murica pretty well.
> has consistently abused its power for at least a century more power in the service of that goal. [1]
That's mostly presidents and their party abusing the executive branch, although it's all allegations.
You must really like this current administration, really raising the bar on what retaliation is.
Buddy of mine, circa 2020. He owns a small plumbing supply business in the upper midwest. Think like fleet of a dozen box trucks. Friday night ~7pm (so well after close of business) he's at the warehouse doing stuff. Notices a couple guys outside slinking around his row of parked trucks, looks like they're stealing fuel. He and the other couple guys with him goes out to see wtf. Yelling match ensues, guns are drawn on both sides. It's a couple guys barely speak english, have no badges, no papers, look like they could be uber drivers. Police show up and mediate the yelling, phone calls get made, etc. Turns out, these guys are like an Nth layer subcontractor of the IRS who are dipping his fuel tanks to check for red diesel because the N-<whatever>th layer subcontractor decided that this business needed to be checked for that particular sort of tax evasion.
He's been audited every year since then. I guess someone must have set the "screw this guy" flag in the database.
No this doesn't have anything to do with 3rd party filing software.
I am not seeing it happen yet but I wonder if this will be the main AI SDLC improvement: you can analyze a ton of docs, build prototypes smoothing the decisions for non-technical stakeholders, and compress development so much that it might actually absorb all the other inefficiencies.
Would love to hear the opposite argument but the point I first saw online is saying the same, that it cost more tax payer money to run than it saved those tax payers.
Scale problem? Open to hearing the opposite argument.
The cost per filing criticism is generally posited in bad faith, by people who don’t understand incremental software delivery, or both
I doubt it's going to beat private industry's price.
It's not a bad faith argument though. If it cost the gov 40$ or it cost a tax payer 40$ what's the difference?
The metrics for this project don't sell it - the politics do. You'll either love it or hate it.
It's a real point but I don't know an example of that happening elsewhere. The US government outcompeting private industry is exactly why communism doesn't work
Given taxes are a government system, and one that’s complicated enough that you shouldn’t expect the average tax payer to need to understand it nor have the money to afford an accountant, it’s actually insane to argue that this should be operated in the private space.
This is exactly the kind of thing the government should operate in capitalist societies.
And those who’s government places policies which benefit their voters generally have a better quality of life than those who accept lobbying, and corruption dictate government policies.
Also fyi the US science budget has literally not changed. So luckily the orange man can kick and scream but our budget for science isn't going away (not to say it's not disrupted).
Also, all these technologies are owned by corporate entities, many of which are ran by exactly the kind of people America is trying to deport (ie not birth citizens). So who’s to say they wouldn’t just move their tech to Europe or china is they were to outbid the US?
Meanwhile the middle and lower classes are getting poorer.
None of this screams prosperity. All you’ve done is traded your national wealth for words of good faith from a small subset of known liars. And by all independent accounts, it’s already costing the US billions.
Yes Europe is struggling too. But a large part of that is because we depended on a US alliance and you can see Europe shifting away from that in favour of building its own sovereign technologies. It will be hard, but if successful that would be the final nail in the coffin for America.
Just remember that Russia used to be a superpower on equal technology footing as America. North and South Korea used to be equally prosperous. Countries can fall behind significantly when managed by egotistical and corrupt despots. Which is ostensibly who you have in charge of America right now.
Other countries, when in the position America is now, are usually faced with two options:
1. Spend decades rebuilding international trust
2. Go to war, ultimately lose the war because it’s basically you vs the rest of the world, and then fall back to option 1 after a suitably humiliating defeat and millions of lives lost from all sides and critical infrastructure and manufacturing destroyed.
It very much feels like America is going for option 2. So I wouldn’t be trusting your long term plans to the orange buffoon if were you. The best case scenario is this downwards spiral is a blip. The worst case scenario is you’ll drag the rest of the glob into another world war.
EU is struggling for a lot of reasons the US was supporting the bad design. I do believe it's a kind of learned helplessness though and youre right. If EU stopped social spending reduced regulations rebuilt their military they could actually make a come back in like 15yrs. Sounds like a long time but that actually is really good and their recent discussions on actually rebuilding their militaries is a glimmer of hope. But the greatness of europe like it was in the past? As of now a totally lost cause and that's cultural. Until the current generation dies and people who want to see europe be a real power again come up there's no way. France would be my bet on this front.
An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost" the only question to ask is wether US is currently in it's 1700 British empire mode or 1940 one.
Everyone has said how the us is failing for literally my entire life now. They intensified in 2016 with oramge man's first term and continued to now. But again, in realistic terms the US is not less than it was a decade ago and in obvious terms it's in a better position today since the 80s.
The most obvious example is energy. Middle east and venuzuela were basically light advesaries. Saudi was leaning towards china. Now? US essentially controls the majority of oil in the entire world. Nobody else can put a fleet of ships on the output of ME like that. Sure Iran can commit terrorism on civilians but nobody can drop an army anywhere in the world like the US. Our arab allies have heavily realigned to the US. Our oil is the highest output ever. Venuzuela is ours so in 15yrs so is the next middle east of oil output.
So again. World energy dominance for the next 50yrs minimum. We have the largest datacenter capacity by a stupidly large margin. Possibly in 20yrs a complete monopoly on industrial space flight. Those 3 things together to me are a near garauntee dominance. Even one of those things could be enough to stay a super power but all of them? All at once? That's a wild combo. No other country even has one of those (i suppose ME countries with oil is the only one).
We'll see how Iran turns out though. That would be the chink in the output above. State sponsored civilian terrorism is a hard thing to stop but they have succeeded in aligning every arab ally against them pretty good.
That’s literally the point we are discussing ;)
> An actual failure of a super power is britain. That's what it looks like when a super power has "lost"
Yeah, Britain definitely falls into that category too. But it’s also worth noting that the empire was literally build from conquest and exploitation. Which brings me back to my previous comment about war.
Our economic influence was based around being a stabilizing force and soft power - both of which we have destroyed. The world was willing to forgive us for 2016-2020, but now they know we are not to be trusted - that we will abandon and publicly abuse our allies no matter how close, that our policy changes based on whichever dictator last talked to Trump, and they know that the other two wings of our government are spineless and powerless sycophants who will never put a stop to any of it. They are forming trade relationships and infrastructure without us, and we will never get back our preferred status.
We have given up generational advantages and are not set up to be a dominant power in anything. We are an empire in accelerating decline.
Massive energy stores, massive military, massive datacenters.
I would not want to bet against that
A massive military that's burning billions and depleting its reserves proving that it can't even protect ships from Iran.
So. Much. Winning.
Drones have made terrorism hard to stop in iran. But it's not over let's see where it goes. The positives are that Iran has effectivelt made lifelong allies of our arab neighbors. They used to lean toward china but now china is supplying weapons to the country bombing their people. Additionally israel and arabs may actually normalize diplomacy between each other as a result which would also be a massive win.
If US can collapse Iran we're looking at it being the strongest it has ever been and likely the strongest power to have ever existed. If not then it's roughly british empire at its peakish as of now.
You mix that with Russia getting it's asses kicked and every single country around china massively aligning with US and that's a recipe for success.
EU honestly is the downside here they are upset but also the sad truth is europe is no longer a world power. A regional one at best.
You could argue that america will BEGIN to decline as the recent policies take effect but as of now really the only negative is we don't do enough social spending and our supply chains aren't secure enough. Let's see how EU does over time if they are forced to build their own military again and population collapse hits their tax base that social spending is gonna get argentina like real fast.
I think its like building a bridge analogy, when it costs you to use ferry only 0.01% of price of the bridge. But when its built its essentially free and ferry goes out of business.
But also, the "bridge" is built? There are tons of companies already doing this.
Also, where can I get tax software for $40? Even freetaxusa isn't free.
P.S. When citing that you had AI do a basic analysis of something, specifying what you analyzed and which AI you used would be nice so other people can reproduce it or dig deeper.
https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/News/Article-View/Article/...
Turns out, governments can be efficient and run things well. You just have to tune the incentive structure correctly.
(Aside, I don't care about cheaply as an axis nearly much as I care about "for the benefit of many". I'd take expensive programs that help everyone, every time.)
The interstate highway system, which replaced a complex system of partially privately owned roads, is another.
In most countries, healthcare is another great example. And arguably education as well - public schooling produces generally pretty good results worldwide for not that much money per student, and outside the US, higher education is often public and incredible value for money.
Road maintenance is normally cheaper/faster with private.
Healthcare is a can of worms but you could be right. The real problem with public health is what happens when these gov can't afford it anymore. US is likely in the wrong now but I want to see the results 50yrs from now when social spending cannot keep up with rising costs and decreasing taxes in EU (population collapse).
Broadband. Look at municipal broadband in Chattanooga. EPB is cheap and offers high quality service.
Health care. Typically socialized systems are cheaper. Medicare pays one tenth the administrative costs private health insurance does.
Insurance. National flood insurance for instance simply isn't offered privately because private insurers charge so much.
Loans, in particular student loans. Private loans are so expensive relative to government ones.
Transit. I use the bus and the train when I'm not biking. It costs me $3 to take a 60 minute train to the airport. It costs me $120 to take a 45 minute Uber. Trains are capable of managing stadium traffic, commute traffic, I can put my bike on board. They are clean and safe.
Charging a consumer or taxing them, what's the difference
the billion dollar tax prep industrial complex as a group spends the most lobbying dollars on tax policy -- in particular, suppressing any effort eliminate or even reduce filing complexity -- and lobbying ops like theirs don't happen because their service's value to tax payers speaks for itself
I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that? Government naturally makes all sorts of stuff overly complicated all on its own.
That's been answered in at least one other reply
> I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that?
- https://apnews.com/article/irs-free-file-tax-returns-391ded1... - https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
> Government naturally makes all sorts of stuff overly complicated all on its own.
By all means let me put a couple of things aside so I can debate this corny gospel for hours n' hours ...
- ~$50M all-in to build which sounds egregious but is small for a government project
- mostly good outcomes
- ~4y to pilot which also sounds egregious for a single moderate-complexity web app but again is practically lightspeed for a government project
People blame it getting shuttered on Trump but this is both a misread and a fundamental misunderstanding of how the government operates. The entire federal government is deliberately paced and primarily driven by a combination of politicals, regulation, budget, Congressional policymaking, and program staffing. The hammer on this was always going to fall,
[1] Congress has maintained a "buy over build" policy since literally the Cold War. Ironically the first policy here (1965) was to buy computers from ADP instead of custom-building them. The most impactful "buy commercial" policy (1996) was also IT focused. This was literally codified in several parts of the FAR, and if we're going to be blaming admins, the Trump admin has actually weakened the FAR with the RFO and would be on the other side of this issue.
[2] This policy is also the foundation upon which IT contractors like Palantir are built, if you've ever wondered "wtf do they do" they are a commercial contractor that builds custom software for government. So agencies get their custom stuff, Congress is happy they bought commercial, and the only loser is the taxpayer who overpaid a factor of 3-5x. To their credit, Palantir is a huge improvement on the status quo, because they charge by use cases and outcomes, whereas traditional SI's operate on a staffing model and a combination of high wrap rates and perverse incentives with billable hours creates horrible outcomes and ballooning costs. Anyways, there are a lot of commercial vendors that this work "could have" gone to and didn't. It would also have been really easy for them to shop this out because this was shaped really well for GSA MAS or STARS III.
[3] When you build things internally with e.g. 18F, one agency is typically the "customer" and pays the other agency (afaik 18F program is nested under the White House). So this really sucks when they walk away; 18F earned a reputation for building things through pilot, blogging about it, puffing their cheeks in the media, sending a bill to the agency, and then running off to the next shiny thing as engineers tend to do. As an agency you save a bit of money initially but now you are left with something nobody knows how to maintain, you have to hire contractors to do it, which by nature has to be a staffing contract, and then the wrap rate alone wrecks you. This happens all the time with commercial vendors, usually when they are outsized or don't get renewed, but obviously upsetting when it happens internally.
[4] The author of this piece was part of the team and so as you'd expect this piece is exceptionally biased. The reality is that the IRS self-assessed the maintenance as low and everybody who reports on this treats this as fact when it was not a GAO estimate, which is what carries any actual weight, it was internal IRS estimates and a single independent that mainly assessed call center volume not the actual system. Not only does their reputation precede them here, but their own spend on buildout (~$30M on contractors to help) contradicts the low maintenance narrative. We may never see a GAO estimate here, but the contract would almost certainly go out to TrussWorks, all government contracting data is public and you can look up for yourself how much TrussWorks typically charges the IRS whether directly or thru ATI's vehicles as subawards.
Right, yes, generally government services have higher taxpayer costs than private industry that isn't funded by taxpayers...
The question, which has not been answered, is: were equal numbers of people to use private vs IRS services, which would at that scale cost more per filing?
Kinda weird someone can delete comments like that on here.
This is a prime example of that. H&R Block, etc, benefit from there not being direct file by around $3bn in revenue or around $750m in profit. Rough sums on the time saved by direct file if everyone used it is 8h * average wage * taxpayers, which seems to be approximately $44bn. i.e. in axing direct file, it has "created" $3bn in economic activity to the private infrastructure-owner (the intermediary between you and filing your return), but at the cost of $44bn in lost time & therefore lost activity (the other things you could have been doing) to the rest of the economy.
Infrastructure is not the economy. Infrastructure is the thing the economy runs on top of / has to use. Given that it is the role of government to govern the economy, it is the role of government to ensure that the infrastructure is running well (be the custodian of the infrastructure).
The only alternative is inserting a third party, one that has full access to all your financial information, an extraordinary level of trust for a private sector that has shown unrelenting loyalty to investors over customers. That shouldn't be necessary for the average filer, assuming a bare minimum of competence, like one might assume for the only country to put a human on the moon and bring them safely home.
Trusting the government to be able to do something is not the same them actually doing it, nor is it the same as them doing it well. With roads the people using them have much more incentive in maintaining them than the government. What a person experiences driving down the road everyday is just a statistic to the government.
> Trusting the government to be able to do something is not the same them actually doing it, nor is it the same as them doing it well.
You are absolutely right. My point is not that the government has proven its competency in this domain, it is whether we should expect it.
The monetary incentives for the most governments don't exist to run projects efficiently, so I don't think it is realistic to expect it. The government can just print money or steal money via taxes to cover up inefficiencies. And since government bureaucracy tends to force things to move at a glacial pace that will be reflected in how it executes projects.
Governments have as much incentive as anyone else to save money. I shouldn't even need to type this but raising taxes is unpopular and tends to cause people to get voted out of office.
People need to stop repeating thise weird talking points about "the government" and its incentives. It's a big, complixated entity made up of literally millions of people all of whom have different motivations and incentives and non-government employees affect those not just in the super obvious way by voting but by every interaction we have with anyone who works there.
This is missing the point. If you got rid of taxes altogether it would reveal what really is being propped up tax money as opposed to actually being valuable enough to exist on its own.
>complixated entity made up of literally millions of people all of whom have different motivations and incentives
Which is why it's important to get the big incentives correct. Otherwise one of these actors will waste resources since expecting people to do the right thing without incentives does not scale.
Are you implying the random people driving down a road also do the maintenance on it? What? How is this any different from literally any other government service?
I'm implying that the people and businesses along a private road pay another company to come in and do maintenance. Unlike government modes you don't have to wait until whenever the government feels like fixing road.
Because if the government is going to accept returns electronically instead of through the physical mail, then it should accept them without requiring an intermediary.
Interestingly, it does this for corporations, but not for individuals.
Gee, I wonder why.
Personally, I think that (a) the government needs to have my PII to process my taxes, and that (b) having the government require me to also hand my PII to a third party in order to pay taxes is a big fucking security nightmare.
The site that was killed was the IRS direct file site.
The webform is through the free file alliance, aka Turbotax and friends.
The API requires you to jump through a million hoops. Heaven help you if the reason you want to use the API is because you are behind on your taxes, because that will signal that you are not of good character.
Speaking of being behind on your taxes, you have to use paper for any but the last three years of returns anyway.
The Republicans are trying to strangle the IRS and outsource everything.
The IRS, despite its many shortcomings, consistently tries to help people get their taxes filed.
So when the Republicans were in charge, and the IRS wanted to ensure that people could just fill out their forms, but the Republicans in congress wouldn't directly support filing through the IRS, the IRS came up with a workaround. It was a workaround both for them and for Turbotax et al, because it sort of acted like a pressure relief valve.
The workaround allowed people to file their taxes for free, so the IRS was, well maybe not happy, but certainly mollified. The workaround kinda sucked for the taxpayer experience, so Turbotax was happy. And the workaround was implemented by private companies rather than the US government, so the Republicans were happy.
But you definitely have to hand your data over to a third party to use this workaround -- effectively the same evil (cough, Turbotax, cough) party you were trying to avoid in the first place.
When the democrats were in charge, they effectively torpedoed the workaround with DirectFile, so of course when the Republicans got back in charge, they had to axe that.
By the way, you mentioned an API. Free file fillable forms does not have one. The only one I know of is the one that the tax program vendors use. Yes, it is publicly documented, but to use it you have to jump through a lot of regulatory hoops.
The government has to maintain some infrastructure to get this sort of thing done. Whether digital or analog. And if it contracts it out, it needs to oversee it. So no matter how it is done, the government has to pay.
Neither system is perfect.
Sure, but in the absence of widespread corruption (which until now, the US has been relatively clear of) they don't just get to go home with that budget in their pocket. They're still paid on standardized pay scales. Any extra budget still gets spent on the actual org or project, with the exception of random things like travel or office supplies.
The contractor takes home every extra dollar as profit.
I don't disagree at all that neither system is perfect, of course, but just saying.
Yes, thats why people arguing that private companies are always better are so annoying.
You get that you're actually agreeing with this post right?
On the flip side, plenty of private companies are expensive and corrupt.
I think it's possible both can be good and both can be bad.
What happened to us?
I wouldn’t class this IRS project as anywhere near the the magnitude of complexity or impact of the projects you mentioned though.
Mainland Europe has “crazy environmental and labour regulations” and manages to build cheaper and faster. So no, your pet hate is not the reason.
This is the case pretty much.