For example I installed Solar panels many years ago and read the exact wording on the Solar Tax Credit to try to figure out if you could include roof repairs under the panels in the credit. The wording was something like "all costs associated with a solar install". Every installer I talked to said yes, but it seemed dubious so I tried calling the IRS help line to get the answer and the help line was no help at all. A few years later and some court battles lost and that answer is now firmly a "no", making me glad I ignored the installer's advice.

How is tax prep software supposed to handle a situation like that? Some of the for pay options include "audit protection", but I don't know how far that goes. I guess you can attempt to pass all liability on to the customer, but even that seems a bit risky.

And definitely the IRS has its own jargon that doesn't always make sense to the layperson. Why, for example, is a form that you fill out once per tax year called a "schedule"? It doesn't organize anything by date or time!

However, it is most likely that the people claiming EITC are the least likely to understand the information there

Intuit's was big enough to pervert American tax policy for decades.

But, realistically, I guess if a self-service tax prep company messed up your taxes, they’d make sure you end up in arbitration.

After staring at code for 12 hours a day for a few decades my zoom is 125% by default.

Well yes, this is in essence what tax return preparation software has always been; The end result is a completed set of values to fill into the boxes of form 1040 (and whatever additional forms are deemed to be required), which can then be filed electronically or written/printed on paper to be returned at an office or by mail.

PS: AFAIK, however, Authorship rights are different from Copyright, and cannot be given/passed as Copyrights, at least in US.

I'm sure Democrats can complain about their Senators in the same language.

  "The IRS will no longer accept returns directly."

This probably wouldn't apply to the "initial commit" problem, but I almost always use fixup instead of amend, ex:

    git add foo.code
    git commit --fixup {commit_with}
    git rebase -i --autosquash {main_or_whatever}

This is particularly useful for the review process: All the changes during the review process can be "fixup" commits, allowing reviewers to easily see what did (or didn't) change since their last interaction. At the same time, all the fiddly fixes and back-and-forth stuff won't be in the final history, only a smaller number of "real" commits that future maintainers would care about.

    git commit --amend --no-edit

https://github.com/git/git/commit/b4019f045646b1770a80394da8...

The situation is a bit different for business owners though, and most of them hire an accountant for this task. Doing it yourself can be risky as you may be committing tax fraud without realizing it before you get audited, or you may end up overpaying.

In fact, the tax forms and accompanying instructions are written at a level that anyone with a high school education should be able to understand. Examples are often included, along with call-outs for "Tips" and "Caution" to highlight key points.

Further, there are dozens of publications that go into more detail and cover probably 90% or more of all the scenarios one would encounter. Pub 17 in particular is a beginning-to-end handbook that covers Form 1040 and the common forms/schedules and the entire filing process, with references to other pubs when appropriate, again all written at a high-school level.

These are available in both PDF and HTML formats. Recall that electronic filing has only been around for a few decades, so prior to that everyone used to fill and file on paper The IRS has long history of providing the necessary instructions to do so at a level accessible to the vast majority of users.

It is also a fact that the tax software providers use these same instructions and publications as the specifications that their software must meet. Literally, they will hold up release of various forms for filing using their software until the IRS finalizes the accompanying form instructions.

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xtyyMPczy6nuj_QR4Jy4J8sf8f3...

I own stocks, all I had to do was fill in the forms on freetaxusa.com based on the forms the brokerage gave me. Just look for non zero fields on the brokerage forms, and fill out the matching box.

If you mean something more sophisticated tax-wise, then I'm sure direct file wouldn't support it either?

Regarding the sim card, I assume that's about two factor codes? IIRC I always logged in through a code received by email.

I'm doing it all by hand because I'm tired of going through the 'free' apps and entering in all my details, and when I get ready to file it end up being hundreds of dollars to file since the other forms (extra 1040 schedules, 2555, etc) are not included.

Let's say you see a green checkmark on GitHub that confirms the commit was really made by GitHub user @totally_legit_government_absolutely_not_hacker.

Unless you already have their public GPG key in your private keychain, and you marked it as "trusted" previously, there's not really much more info to that.

UPDATE: besides, the government is like a million people, some of them are malicious actors.

Journalism is labor

I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.

I am all for simplifying the tax code but consumption taxes are the wrong way to go about it.

Some investment-related returns aren't sent to the IRS but I would estimate that for 90% of people, their taxes could be accurately calculated by the information the IRS has on file.

Additionally, I guarantee that these calculations are being made by the government anyway. If you file a tax return that is mathematically incorrect, you are very likely to receive a correction letter from the IRS[2]. This isn't an audit, it's just a letter saying that your taxes were wrong and they redid them for you, with a new outcome.

1. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-types-for-individ... (see "Wage and income transcript")

2. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/understanding-your-cp12-noti...

The system is just really complicated if you have anything weird, and “anything weird” happens a lot.

The estimates you shared are based on survey responses so you'd have to take them with a grain of salt. All the other websites are repeating the same survey.

It was through freetaxusa, maybe handwriting balloons the job a bit? But it looks like only 14% file physically.