[freedomben]

That's really neat and I'm glad you're doing it. That said I worked on tax software once and the amount of changes each year are huge and often require expert analysis. Sometimes they get dropped on you with very little notice.

How does the project plan to keep up with that? Will it require volunteers?

[aidangrimshaw]

Absolutely, yeah the project has a loose group of contributor volunteers but longer term we would probably have to have a larger, more formal structure.

Right now, we're focusing on tooling to make onboarding new tax forms simpler and require a lower threshold of project understanding to allow a larger, less technical group of people to contribute

[formerkrogeremp]

Huh, as an aspiring tax professional how do I get in on this?

[IggleSniggle]

Go to the GitHub link above, read the README, and pay special attention to the “CONTRIBUTING” section.

If you have questions and the README and CONTRIBUTING documents do not specify a way to communicate, then open Issues on GitHub with your questions. Try to avoid asking questions unless you’ve read everything and cannot figure out how to proceed: remember that everyone working on the project is volunteering their limited time, just like you, and try to be respectful of their time and energy.

I am unaffiliated with this project, this is just the general procedure for contributing to open source projects.

[formerkrogeremp]

Thank you for the explanation. I've never contributed before to open source and have benefited from open source software a lot, so I'm trying to contribute to this the right way.

[zakpatterson]

Awesome

[ehsankia]

I assume the amount of changes is much higher for the more complex tax forms, which 99% of people don't need. If this free software can even just handle the free tier or semi-complex tier filing, it's still a huge step.

[singron]

The 1040 changes just about every year although it's usually just updating line numbers and various amounts (e.g. standard deduction). The 1040 schedules often get updates too.

IME everything else stays the same (e.g. the 8000s forms), but there are so many of them that it's a lot of work to just see which ones have changed and if you have to care about them. The forms also become less formulaic. E.g. If you file 6251, you need to keep your own records about Alternative basis, so you can't just fill them out based on w2s and 1099s.