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#93 of 100 · Money

Taxes without TurboTax

A free or open-source way to prepare and file personal taxes, plus tools that check a return, in the US and Canada.

7asks, each re-read
7separate threads
6of 19 years
4since 2024
2016first asked

Asks per year

’08’10’12’141’161’18’20’2212’2411’26

What the askers want

  • Would pay0%
  • Want it local or private0%
  • Object to subscriptions0%
  • Want it open source or self-hosted43%
  • Want AI to do it14%

Share of the 7 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.

What exists on Show HN

Tried, never finished7 Show HN launches do part of this. None does the whole job.

Instead of: TurboTax, FreeTaxUSA

The idea, as matched

A free or open-source personal income tax preparation and e-filing tool (TurboTax alternative), including CLI or AI helpers that fill or double-check returns, for the US and other countries.

Jev first matched 10 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 7 of 10.

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. A headline-only entry and policy wishes excluded.

  1. Mar 2026Wants a CLI or MCP tool for filing US taxes, preferably with FreeTaxUSA. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there any CLI or MCP tools for filing US taxes?”
  2. Oct 2025Wonders why no non-profit has built a free tax filing app to replace TurboTax. Read it: a comment in “TurboTax’s 20-year fight to stop Americans from filing taxes for free (2019)”
  3. Mar 2024Wants a tool extracting data from 1040, W-2 and 1099 forms so an LLM can review the return. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: WebApp or Open Source project to review my 1040 tax form”
  4. Jan 2024Asks for a Canadian equivalent of FreeTaxUSA. Read it: a comment in “FreeTaxUSA”
  5. May 2023Asks why no decent open-source tax filing application exists. Read it: a comment in “IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants”
  6. Apr 2018Complains the free fillable tax forms have unlabeled manual fields and miss the estimated-tax penalty; wants better filing. Read it: a comment in “TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown”
  7. Mar 2016Wants a good open-source 1040 calculator that tracks yearly tax-code changes. Read it: a comment in “Py1040 – A U.S. personal income tax calculator”

Building this?

Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.

See all 100How the counts work

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