<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>b__k</author><text>Hi, I&amp;#x27;m the project author.&lt;p&gt;I started writing this to do my own taxes, which are very complicated---the project covers forms 1040, 6251, part of 8582, 1040 schedules A &amp;amp; E, and several worksheets because I actually have to file all of those. [Well, I don&amp;#x27;t have to file f6251, but I can&amp;#x27;t prove that without going through it.]&lt;p&gt;But since starting I&amp;#x27;m thinking more and more about the value of a public reference version of the tax code. I discuss this more here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bureauphile.wordpress.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;managing-complexity-encoding-the-tax-code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bureauphile.wordpress.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;managing-comple...&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;p&gt;Thanks to this thread I&amp;#x27;ve learned about a few other implementations of the code, and I&amp;#x27;ll have to check them out. But I should note that the XML documents from the IRS are not one of them. They do a good deal of error checking, but you can&amp;#x27;t use them to solve for the bottom line. It&amp;#x27;s the lack of a reference implementation of the tax code from the IRS that has led me and evidently several others to roll our own.&lt;p&gt;Given a reference implementation, there are a lot of things one could do: a what-if calculator for consumers or businesses, a policy analysis tool using IRS SOI (statistics of income) data, still more infographics beyond the one at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;b-k.github.io&amp;#x2F;1040.js&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;b-k.github.io&amp;#x2F;1040.js&lt;/a&gt; , tools for in-person tax prep for all the tax clinics that pop up this time of year. In a perfect and ideal world, IRS would pick up on all this potential utility and would start providing a reference implementation themselves.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Py1040 – A U.S. personal income tax calculator</title><url>https://github.com/b-k/py1040</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>danso</author><text>Count me as one of the people who needs to pay for software to do taxes every year...it&amp;#x27;s only something I do once a year, so not frequently enough that personal automation would be worthwhile (even as a weekend project)...and...the tax code to me is probably like what software installation is to the people who pay fees to Geek Squad :p&lt;p&gt;But this from the author sounds promising:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;By re-presenting the tax calculation as a tree, we have the ability to trace back what led to any surprises on the tax form, aggregate multiple users, and otherwise process the information in a manner that would be difficult or incoherent using only the form view. If your financial situation gives you the freedom to act on what-if scenarios, or if you are a tax researcher considering the situations of diverse taxpayers, the structures here are hopefully more amenable to your needs.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I mean, I guess that&amp;#x27;s the normal pattern of software innovation...take something very specific, abstract it a bit, and now you have something that opens new ways of thinking and exploring. I wasn&amp;#x27;t aware that there was XML metadata that could be interpreted...though in retrospect...obviously there would have to be for tax software to stay up to date, though I pictured in my head that Turbotax and its peers just bring in hundreds of data entry persons to pore over reams of tax code paper documents to fix up the app every year.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Py1040 – A U.S. personal income tax calculator</title><url>https://github.com/b-k/py1040</url></story>