I suspect that they’ve been pressured to keep it out of public by turbo tax lobbyists, but with the straight on attempt to kill it lately, they decided just to ignore that pressure and push it out to spite those lobbyists.
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 08 Jun 2025 01:40
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Isn’t most software made by the US government required to be open source anyway?
jagged_circle@feddit.nl
on 08 Jun 2025 14:23
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Actually, it’s illegal for them to make software copyleft :(
We need to change that law :(
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 08 Jun 2025 21:24
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That’s just untrue. The NSA even has a pretty cool repo.
jagged_circle@feddit.nl
on 08 Jun 2025 21:48
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Unfortunately it’s not untrue. There are some exceptions to the law.
Either NSA got an exception or their code is public domain
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org
on 08 Jun 2025 17:27
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Ahahahahaha this is America we’re talking about
kaeurenne@lemmy.kadaikupi.space
on 08 Jun 2025 05:18
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Could you please kindly tell me what IRS stands for?
Powderhorn@beehaw.org
on 08 Jun 2025 09:27
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The Internal Revenue Service. It’s the U.S. tax collection agency, created a bit over a century ago under, shall we say, questionable circumstances.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 08 Jun 2025 16:12
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What do you mean by questionable circumstances?
Powderhorn@beehaw.org
on 08 Jun 2025 16:17
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There is no historical agreement that states ratifying the income tax itself actually happened.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 08 Jun 2025 16:32
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There is no historical agreement that the earth is round, but guess what?
When the second argument that is listed in Wikipedia is that Ohio doesn’t count when it had been a state for over a century before the amendment was proposed, I start to think these arguments are specious at best. It seems every judge the case had gone before agreed with that stance, which also sounds like historical agreement to me. Given the amendment was proposed due to the Supreme Court overturning income tax as unconstitutional, it also appears the courts were more than willing to rule against income tax prior to this supposedly dubious amendment.
Do you have any evidence that is stronger than the Obama birther conspiracies?
Powderhorn@beehaw.org
on 08 Jun 2025 16:57
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If you sole-source Wikipedia, I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m not going off on a research excursion to prove myself right from things I’ve read over decades. It’s of no import to me whether you believe me; if you’re truly curious, look into it yourself. The origins of the income tax are more complex than one article can assert.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 08 Jun 2025 17:17
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You’re right, Wikipedia is a terrible primary source, because it isn’t a primary source. So, while you should never reference it in a paper or dissertation, the sources it references are perfectly valid. The good news is, I’m not writing an essay or dissertation, and I don’t have to follow the correct rules for those. I did you the favor of clicking two links deeper (it took about a minute) and finding the information where they talk about all those cases that the judges totally threw so they could force you to pay illegal taxes. Now, I can’t make you turn that link purple, but if you do you might get the other side of that argument that you apparently haven’t stumbled across in your decades of examination. Good luck.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org
on 08 Jun 2025 18:16
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So, your assertion is that the IRS is a good source for information about the validity of the IRS? Case law doesn’t cover whether ratification actually happened, but rather that the courts are going with it.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 08 Jun 2025 18:49
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They are a better source than anything you’ve provided, yes.
AdmiralWhiskersIV@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 08 Jun 2025 17:23
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I tend not to comment, but this is peak nutter commentary so I feel compelled. You’re following the standard format of…
Nutter: Let me tell you about my unproven conspiracy theory!
Anyone else: that’s wild, can you prove it?
Nutter: Do your own research, I don’t care if you believe me (i.e., I can’t prove it because it’s insane).
100% unrefined Facebook gran behaviour.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org
on 08 Jun 2025 18:10
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Look, I’ve been in journalism since 1998 and off Facebook since 2014. If you want to believe I’m full of shit, you’re of course free to, but that’s a terrible analogy.
brandon@piefed.social
on 08 Jun 2025 16:22
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jagged_circle@feddit.nl
on 08 Jun 2025 21:49
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Because it’s a gift to corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
It means that any company can take that code, modify it (as would be required every year per IRS tax changes), and resell it without being required to publish the source code changes.
What many European countries are doing is requiring the government to publish code under a copyleft license. That would allow companies to also benefit from this code to make their own tools (which they could also sell), and it would require them to publish the source code of their improvements.
Basically copyleft legally ensures collaboration. Public domain does not.
threaded - newest
Based IRS. So the torch will need to be carried by open source devs.
Article says it was always required to be open source and it is not an act of defiance
Cooperating with the law is often percieved as an act of defiance with this administration, though.
I suspect that they’ve been pressured to keep it out of public by turbo tax lobbyists, but with the straight on attempt to kill it lately, they decided just to ignore that pressure and push it out to spite those lobbyists.
Isn’t most software made by the US government required to be open source anyway?
Actually, it’s illegal for them to make software copyleft :(
We need to change that law :(
That’s just untrue. The NSA even has a pretty cool repo.
Unfortunately it’s not untrue. There are some exceptions to the law.
Either NSA got an exception or their code is public domain
Ahahahahaha this is America we’re talking about
Could you please kindly tell me what IRS stands for?
The Internal Revenue Service. It’s the U.S. tax collection agency, created a bit over a century ago under, shall we say, questionable circumstances.
What do you mean by questionable circumstances?
There is no historical agreement that states ratifying the income tax itself actually happened.
There is no historical agreement that the earth is round, but guess what?
When the second argument that is listed in Wikipedia is that Ohio doesn’t count when it had been a state for over a century before the amendment was proposed, I start to think these arguments are specious at best. It seems every judge the case had gone before agreed with that stance, which also sounds like historical agreement to me. Given the amendment was proposed due to the Supreme Court overturning income tax as unconstitutional, it also appears the courts were more than willing to rule against income tax prior to this supposedly dubious amendment.
Do you have any evidence that is stronger than the Obama birther conspiracies?
If you sole-source Wikipedia, I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m not going off on a research excursion to prove myself right from things I’ve read over decades. It’s of no import to me whether you believe me; if you’re truly curious, look into it yourself. The origins of the income tax are more complex than one article can assert.
You’re right, Wikipedia is a terrible primary source, because it isn’t a primary source. So, while you should never reference it in a paper or dissertation, the sources it references are perfectly valid. The good news is, I’m not writing an essay or dissertation, and I don’t have to follow the correct rules for those. I did you the favor of clicking two links deeper (it took about a minute) and finding the information where they talk about all those cases that the judges totally threw so they could force you to pay illegal taxes. Now, I can’t make you turn that link purple, but if you do you might get the other side of that argument that you apparently haven’t stumbled across in your decades of examination. Good luck.
So, your assertion is that the IRS is a good source for information about the validity of the IRS? Case law doesn’t cover whether ratification actually happened, but rather that the courts are going with it.
They are a better source than anything you’ve provided, yes.
I tend not to comment, but this is peak nutter commentary so I feel compelled. You’re following the standard format of…
Nutter: Let me tell you about my unproven conspiracy theory!
Anyone else: that’s wild, can you prove it?
Nutter: Do your own research, I don’t care if you believe me (i.e., I can’t prove it because it’s insane).
100% unrefined Facebook gran behaviour.
Look, I’ve been in journalism since 1998 and off Facebook since 2014. If you want to believe I’m full of shit, you’re of course free to, but that’s a terrible analogy.
They are referring to some fringe "tax protester" conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification
Suffice it to say, these 'theories' have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.
Sorry, saw your response just after I had posted the same in response to his comment.
Licensed CC0. Assholes.
Why assholes?
For profit companies can take it, close source it, and make it paid software. Which is why GPL is superior.
But people can keep developing an open-source version, right?
Yeah but people can be stupid bastards. For some reason some people would rather get it from TurboTax than they would a github repo
Yeah. I see. Thanks for the replies.
Because it’s a gift to corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
It means that any company can take that code, modify it (as would be required every year per IRS tax changes), and resell it without being required to publish the source code changes.
What many European countries are doing is requiring the government to publish code under a copyleft license. That would allow companies to also benefit from this code to make their own tools (which they could also sell), and it would require them to publish the source code of their improvements.
Basically copyleft legally ensures collaboration. Public domain does not.