This is a service. What happens if some ideologue turns off whatever is listening on the government's end? Unless this forked version will then print out a bunch of forms for someone to physically mail in, owning this software without being able to communicate to a digital host is useless.
> Unless this forked version will then print out a bunch of forms for someone to physically mail in
Well yes, this is in essence what tax return preparation software has always been; The end result is a completed set of values to fill into the boxes of form 1040 (and whatever additional forms are deemed to be required), which can then be filed electronically or written/printed on paper to be returned at an office or by mail.
The IRS accepts efilings in a prescribed format so that isnt a danger. If you look at a tax transcript produced from efiling vs a paper return, there is no material difference besides the fields related to how they were submitted.
I have no idea how I'd go about looking at an efiling. Does it essentially send a PDF export or does it hit an API and provide the data in a specified format? I could see how it would make sense for a giant government agency to want the equivalent of a PDF to hand off to humans so that it's "just like everything else".
