[gamblor956]

DirectFile was created by the IRS, a federal agency, for preparing your federal income tax return, in a manner similar to the streamlined e-file options available in other countries (i.e., for the most common/basic situations).

There are 50 states, and every single one of them has their own idea of what an income tax return should look like, so a direct file that handled state returns would take several years and hundreds of staff to develop and maintain.

The US also has significantly more tax planning/tax structuring opportunities than do other countries, and DirectFile doesn't even try to handle those...but neither do its foreign counterparts. If you have a more complicated tax situation, like most software engineers do, than DirectFile isn't for you, and never was intended for your use case.

[ethbr1]

> so a direct file that handled state returns would take several years and hundreds of staff to develop and maintain.

The way to extend this, if the federal government wanted to push it, would be to define a standard export format from IRS DirectFile, containing all the information in it...

... then make some federal money contingent on states implementing a filing system with an import function (for the shared data).

Nice clean interface, and still states' choices on if they want to support.

[dheera]

> There are 50 states, and every single one of them has their own idea

That's not my problem. The states are part of the country. This is as bad as restaurants charging tips instead of stating one number. Government dudes should meet and work it out between state/federal and give me one damn number.

All I want is one number.

[galdosdi]

Incorrect. You must not be a US citizen (or else went to a poor quality K12 school that failed to teach the basic civics)

States are NOT an administrative subdivision of the larger country. This is a common misconception. They are not at all like Japanese prefectures, not like Canadian provinces, nor like the counties or parishes that US states are subdivided into.

States are fully sovereign entities that retain to this day certain inalienable rights vis a vis the federal government.

A good analogy is that the US is more like a stronger version of the EU. States like New York and Texas within the US are more like Germany or France-- they've ceder some rights to the federation but retain many others. The US constitution, which is short and easy to read and required reading for the US Citizenship test, clearly outlines which powers are reserved for which part.

>That's not my problem. The states are part of the country.

[galdosdi]

While I'm at it, the very attitude of "that's not my problem" reveals your foreignness (or if you are from here and very young, perhaps the sad fact that civic culture is dying everywhere but maybe new england)

America has or has traditionally had a strong culture of self determination and citizen involvement in and ownership of politics and government policy.

Another word for this is democracy. Real, genuine, messy democracy. America is not a service provider to you. It is a union or coop you are a part of.

You are not a customer of your country. You are a member. A shareholder.

This attitude is I know very foreign to many people who come from elsewhere and only know authoritarian states or democracies in name only. Or very young people who have caught on that civic culture is dying in most of America.

But it's fundamentally diametrically opposed to what this country has always been intended to be at its best. it is very very much your problem

[jltsiren]

US states are not fully sovereign. There is a simple test for that: can a state secede unilaterally. If not, states are subordinate to the federal government.

The original idea of the US was a decentralized state. The Union is the sovereign entity, while power rests with the individual states, unless explicitly given to the federal government. Over time, it became clear that you can't run a country like that in the modern world. Slowly, with creative interpretations of the Constitution, the federal government gained more and more power over the states.

One of the distinctive features of the actual US system is that it's often unclear which level of government has the authority to regulate a particular matter. Much of the political debate is about the constitutionality of laws and regulations, which may have been in force for decades. And controversial legislation often ends up in the Supreme Court, which may then decide that the state or the federal government did not have the authority to regulate that.

[rockinghigh]

No need for personal attacks. The states and the federal government could better coordinate tax filing, it would not be against the US constitution.

[galdosdi]

Not a personal attack. There is nothing wrong with being a foreigner or having grown up in a bad school district.

[lttlrck]

The US Constitution is not required reading for the citizenship test.

[galdosdi]

Not formally, but might as well be. Plenty of the questions can be answered by looking them up in the Constitution, and it can be read through and annotated thoroughly in an afternoon.

[Jtsummers]

The US is a federated system, the states' tax laws are independent of the federal tax laws (mostly, there are some interactions in there) and the responsibility for collecting state taxes falls on the state. The federal government cannot step in without authority which would have to be delegated by the states because it is their authority, not the fed's.

[8note]

From you early comment along the lines of "I make my taxes as complicated as possible so that I can save money on taxes"

You would never take the one number if you could save money by making it a thousand instead. Eg. if your state did that simplification, youd move to a different state that doesn't have the simplification so you can save a couple bucks on the taxes

[Spivak]

> so a direct file that handled state returns would take several years and hundreds of staff to develop and maintain

Or just contract one of the companies that already do it with a public-private partnership. HR Block or whatever gets paid say 2x their current tax prep revenue in exchange for being the white-label direct-file available for free to everyone.

Like these tax prep companies are crazy cheap for just being able to hit import next next next next next submit and never think about taxes ever. The work is already done, why duplicate it?

[dessimus]

>Or just contract one of the companies that already do it with a public-private partnership.

The IRS tried that already and the 3rd parties just used dark patterns that tricked customers into paying for unnecessary services.