<story><title>IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/irs-taxes-direct-file-free-program</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>I meat this is Y Combinator Hacker News, so I would expect &amp;quot;software engineers in California&amp;quot; to be a significant fraction of the user base here.</text></item><item><author>dmd</author><text>94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for &amp;quot;software engineers in California&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>dheera</author><text>sigh this is a baby step but&lt;p&gt;- Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File&lt;p&gt;- From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it&lt;p&gt;- Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboTax by using TurboTax instead of Direct File, as much as I hate it</text></item><item><author>macrael</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I&amp;#x27;ve been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn&amp;#x27;t include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b&amp;#x2F;c they were able to scope things down to something doable in 9 months.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cududa</author><text>The problem is you&amp;#x27;re exposing yourself as someone extremely self-centered, and someone that assumes their lived experience is equivalent of everyone else&amp;#x27;s, and adjudicating the utility of this particular thing as if you are reflective of the larger population.&lt;p&gt;Saying the majority of engineers in California make at least $200k makes you even more out of touch. According to Glassdoor, over $200k for a SE in CA is 90th percentile. The average SE in CA makes $132,000&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&amp;#x2F;Salaries&amp;#x2F;Software-Engineer-Salary--in-California&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&amp;#x2F;Salaries&amp;#x2F;Software-Engineer-Sala...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/irs-taxes-direct-file-free-program</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>I meat this is Y Combinator Hacker News, so I would expect &amp;quot;software engineers in California&amp;quot; to be a significant fraction of the user base here.</text></item><item><author>dmd</author><text>94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for &amp;quot;software engineers in California&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>dheera</author><text>sigh this is a baby step but&lt;p&gt;- Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File&lt;p&gt;- From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it&lt;p&gt;- Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboTax by using TurboTax instead of Direct File, as much as I hate it</text></item><item><author>macrael</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I&amp;#x27;ve been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn&amp;#x27;t include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b&amp;#x2F;c they were able to scope things down to something doable in 9 months.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>schmidtleonard</author><text>Your suggestion that we don&amp;#x27;t &amp;#x2F; shouldn&amp;#x27;t care about anything other than ourselves is more than a little insulting, whether you intended that or not.&lt;p&gt;In any case, like the root of this comment tree says, the best way to make sure this program lives to reach us is to make sure it paces itself. If that means another year or two of TurboTax, that&amp;#x27;s A-OK!</text></comment>