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Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Three dominant themes in the discussion

# Theme Representative quotes
1 AI’s role in tax processing and its limits • SamoyedFurFluff: “The thing that makes me nervous is the statement that they plan to use AI. AI? The thing that is mathematically incapable of perfection, on finance information, for which perfection is table stakes?”
• rtkwe: “Most tax returns these days are prepared and submitted electronically so the basic work of the arithmetic involved should be as close as possible to perfect already…LLMs have been pretty bad at that.”
• kerblang: “I'm starting to realize that an LLM isn't gonna take my job, but it's beginning to make the job aggravating enough to quit anyhow.”
2 Political under‑funding and erosion of IRS effectiveness • cael450: “The people in charge have a pathological hatred for the IRS…AI is just an excuse to continue destroying the capabilities of the IRS.”
• mschuster91: “Starve the beast in action. The less employees the IRS has, the lower the chance there are enough staff on hand to audit the truly uber‑rich properly.”
• munk‑a: “They have worked recently to implement a self‑hosted tax submission system and given their rate of return…netting $415 for every dollar of funding in 2024.”
3 Debate over tax‑code complexity and calls for simplification • dheera: “They could also simplify tax law and they wouldn't need so much enforcement. There shouldn't be 5,000 types of taxes spread all over the place.”
• AdamH12113: “I agree with your overall point of simplifying taxes by merging more things into income tax, but some of the taxes you mentioned are levied by local governments to fund themselves.”
• claytongulick: “I like the idea of consumption tax exclusively… It’s easy to drive behavior and make it fairer.”

These three threads—AI reliability, political manipulation of IRS resources, and the push to simplify an over‑complicated tax system—capture the bulk of the conversation.

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

AuditRisk.io

Summary

  • A web platform that estimates an individual or small business’s likelihood of being audited by the IRS, using historical audit data, user-provided return details, and machine‑learning models.
  • Provides actionable mitigation steps (e.g., documentation, filing corrections) and a transparent audit‑trigger dashboard.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Individual taxpayers, small‑business owners, tax preparers
Core Feature Audit‑risk scoring, trigger analysis, mitigation recommendations
Tech Stack Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, scikit‑learn, IRS data APIs
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue‑ready: $49/month for professionals, freemium for individuals

Notes

  • HN commenters fear “AI audits” and “audit triggers” (“Most tax returns… should be as close as possible to perfect already.”). AuditRisk.io turns that fear into data‑driven confidence.
  • Practical utility: users can see which line items raise flags and adjust before filing, reducing audit probability and potential penalties.
  • Discussion potential: “Can an ML model beat the IRS’s own audit heuristics?” and “How to validate the model against real audit outcomes?”

SimpleTax

Summary

  • A low‑cost, guided tax‑filing wizard that auto‑pulls W‑2s, simplifies form completion, and checks for common audit triggers, specifically targeting low‑income and gig‑economy workers.
  • Eliminates the $30–$50 fee of commercial tax software while keeping compliance high.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Low‑income individuals, gig workers, freelancers
Core Feature Auto‑fetch payroll data, step‑by‑step wizard, audit‑risk check
Tech Stack React, Node.js, Stripe, IRS API, PostgreSQL
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby (free) with optional $5 premium audit‑check add‑on

Notes

  • HN users lament “TurboTax will do that hard work for you for $30.” SimpleTax offers the same functionality for free, with a tiny optional audit‑check fee.
  • Addresses frustration that low‑income taxpayers are “audited” for minor errors (“If we are talking about poor people… how do you think they supposedly would get hit by a giant IRS penalty?”).
  • Practical utility: reduces cognitive load, ensures accurate filing, and lowers audit risk for the most vulnerable taxpayers.

TaxSimplify

Summary

  • An AI‑powered tax‑code summarizer that translates the 70,000‑page U.S. tax code into plain‑English explanations, interactive Q&A, and developer‑friendly API endpoints.
  • Empowers individuals, small businesses, and developers to understand obligations without wading through legalese.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Individuals, small‑business owners, developers
Core Feature Code summarization, Q&A, API for tax‑code snippets
Tech Stack OpenAI GPT‑4, FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, Docker
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue‑ready: $99/month for API access, freemium for individuals

Notes

  • HN commenters repeatedly call out the tax code’s complexity (“I think the tax code is so complex that it is a mess.”). TaxSimplify turns that complexity into digestible knowledge.
  • Practical utility: developers can embed up‑to‑date tax‑code logic into apps; taxpayers can quickly verify deductions and credits.
  • Discussion potential: “Can an LLM truly capture the nuance of tax law?” and “How to keep the summarizer legally compliant as the code changes.”

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