Direct File officially opens in 12 pilot states

So apparently using this thing requires people to sign up and interview through ID.me, a private company with some controversy around facial recognition stuff and a non-governmental domain in Montenegro.<p>There&#x27;s a certain flavor of very banal insanity here, as the US government (A) tries to outsource a core competency of <i>identifying taxpayers</i> in its jurisdiction and (B) promotes a domain name that should instead be a bad-answer in anti-phishing security training.

You have to give up your privacy to even login to IRS.gov because to use ID.me one must:<p>* Consent to the collection, use, and sharing of their personal information to third parties (i.e. data brokers).<p>* Agree to binding arbitration and a waiver of class action rights.<p>* Agree to limits on liability for any indirect, punitive, special, exemplary, incidental, or consequential damages.<p>* Consent to arbitrary termination of the account at any time for any reason.<p>Login.gov (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;login.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;login.gov&#x2F;</a>) is the obvious choice for a login service. Enough excuses.

Dealing with the IRS is never fun because it normally means you owe money but I have to say they’re quite competent (once you get a hold of them) and their digital services seem to be improving constantly.<p>Nice to see a branch of government actively trying to be user friendly (in the ways they can control). The IRS can’t do much about our insanely complex tax laws but they can make it easier to file.

You can’t report a good number of forms with this thing that I would have liked to see for those who work gig jobs and then get stuck having to pay Intuit money: 1099-K, 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC, Tips etc —<p>That being said! This is just a pilot and I’m super excited to see it, anything that distances us from things like TurboTax is progress.

I filed with DirectFile in the pilot and I think might have found an issue during the pilot where NY taxes don’t get fully sent over to the FileYourStateTaxes tool for NY.<p>I DID have a few day wait while the state tax partner sorted that out (half think they ended up having to roll out a new feature because of me, whoops) but other than that the IRS and state side went smoothly.<p>I had actually started my return in TaxAct and balked at the price for my simple return but the IRS and state tools all agreed with TaxAct’s own numbers so I’m assuming everything went by the book.<p>FWIW I’m a simple tax case, one W2, some student loan interest, fairly boring.

&gt; The IRS designed the pilot to follow the best practices for launching a new technology platform by starting small, making sure it works and then building from there.<p>But they&#x27;re including the 4 most populous states, which comprise 37% of the population by themselves. lol

They could literally just copy the uk platform. It’s clear, easy to use, accessible, centralised, non commercial, modern and the UK gov website design teams does a lot of their UI work in the open anyway.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;design-system.service.gov.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;design-system.service.gov.uk&#x2F;</a>

This is awesome! And well overdue.<p>I&#x27;m okay with this working only for the folks whose returns would&#x27;ve been simple &#x2F; 1040EZ. A huge step in the right direction.

This is exciting. I hope Intuit gets what it deserves. Their obstruction of simplifying the tax code has gone on long enough.

What&#x27;s the story behind this? In the UK you&#x27;ve been able to file your tax returns online for well over a decade.

I’m excited for this - even if right now all I get is “There was an error processing your request.”

Unfortunately you can&#x27;t use it if you have a 1099-DIV, i.e. pretty much anyone who owns any stocks not in a tax-advantaged account :(

My state is not in the pilot, so I can&#x27;t try it myself. Have anyone here used it yet? How was the experience?

Interesting that 8 of the 9 states that have no income tax(no Alaska) are part of the pilot.

Cool. I can&#x27;t wait until they open up for companies. As much as I enjoy printing, writing and posting, it&#x27;s a pain and kind of byzantine to mail off 1120 returns.<p>Maybe that part of the system is too complex tho...:(

Can’t split states when you moved half way in the year

Is there source code available for the system?

Why of all things should simplifying tax filing be means tested?

I hate this solution. Instead of simplifying tax law, the government is just building another layer of crap on top. If this is all they are going to do, why bother at all? Why not instead subsidize tax preparation software for “simple” cases and be done.

Any idea if this will work for expats?

How firm of footing is this program? If there is a change of leadership next year, will this be strangled in the crib?

Tldr (pasted):<p><pre><code> Arizona California Florida Massachusetts Nevada New Hampshire New York South Dakota Tennessee Texas Washington State Wyoming</code></pre>