Finally being able to stop paying Intuit $150 every year as a reward for their lobbying against tax code simplification and free e-file is one of the most exciting possibilities for AI imo

I used Claude Code to prepare my personal income tax return this year, and so far the IRS hasn’t come after me.

Had Claude generate yaml files for the input/source documents, then had it generate code to process the return into output yaml files.

Manually typed the results into the IRS Free File Forms website, and was pleased to see that it did some input validation.

Had it generate Code modules to match the IRS forms and schedules by name, keeping the nomenclature in code as close as possible to that in the official IRS instructions.

Spot checked a whole lot of it and found very, very little of it that needed correction.

Stored all of it in git so that I could monitor the diffs as it went along.

Maybe the neatest part was when I asked Claude why I wound up owing so much it gave me a list of reasons and dollar amounts in descending order.

Here in Portugal, tax comes pre calculated from the government on a free web application. It works very well! I just need to do very small adjustments every year before deliver the taxes.

To have the tax code easily dealt with and returns filed by IRS's own software will be a happy day. At that point maybe most of Intuit's employees can find other jobs.