alt Hacker NewsShow HN: A proof-of-concept formalization of the IRS federal tax forms
The linked repo is 100% vibe coded, but it was built on a handful of principles:
- Most tax software derives trust from the party who maintains it (e.g. Intuit, the IRS, etc.)
- Vibe coded software lacks this trustworthiness.
- Therefore any formalization should build in verifiability and mechanisms that make it possible for users/maintainers to trace claims/interpretations back to authoritative source documents.
It's very much a back-burner passive project right now (do not use this for anything real!), but I feel strongly that something like this ought to exist for the public good. I built it to get a sense of what the shape of what such a thing might be.
Comments
Have fun keeping this up to date. It's an admirable idea, but the tax forms and rules change significantly every year. I built a payroll system for a suite of small and medium sized businesses back in the day. Even during a stable administration the rules are impossible to keep up with. We had a team of engineers who every year had to spend weeks to months trying to keep it up to date and verify the numbers. It's why my accountant makes $400/hr and why there are no open source projects that have ever taken hold in the market.
> Most tax software derives trust from the party who maintains it (e.g. Intuit, the IRS, etc.)
Because they have the resources to keep it up to date. And even they get it wrong sometimes. Including the IRS itself: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/known-issues-and-soluti...
Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278497
Hey, I'm working on something similar here:
https://github.com/captaincole/OpenReturn
And I have a concept as well for how people can verify the solver by running their own previous returns through the engine. Would love to collaborate as this is a side project for me as well.
Would this method have turned up inconsistencies in the IRS's own guidance if such inconsistencies existed?
Actual subject matter experts at the IRS already did this, but then funding was killed. They did open-source it during the project's death throes. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1l13uvu/irs_op...
Filing your taxes seems like one of the worst conceivable use of vibe-coding, out of innumerable terrible uses.
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Author here: if you want a detailed overview of the project, the spec is better than the (claude-authored) README file:
https://github.com/emmilco/us-tax-model/blob/main/spec/spec....