Originally published on Forbes.com.
If you are one of those people who believe that the information you need to be in tax compliance borders on the impenetrable, you now have a chance to do something about it. And maybe win some money, if your solutions are really good. Taxable money that is, but so what? The IRS has announced the rollout of its “Tax Design Challenge”.The purpose of the challenge is to encourage innovative ideas for the “taxpayer experience of the future”.
Somehow the Mortgage Bankers Association is involved, but I did not find anything on their site about it. The Tax Design Challenge is a crowdsourcing competition open to the public. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said:
Crowdsourcing is a new activity for the IRS, but we believe working with citizens and the private sector will help support innovation in an important area for the nation’s tax system. The Tax Design Challenge reflects our commitment to find the best ideas and plan for a future state of tax administration that works well for taxpayers and our partners.
The goal is to make it easier for a person to manage their tax responsibilities and use their tax data to make decisions about their personal finance. David Stevens, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association said:
At MBA, one of our goals is to help families achieve home ownership, and the ability to safely obtain and share one’s own tax information is critical to that process. Ultimately, the designs produced through this competition could help millions of Americans securely interact with our tax system faster and easier.
There will be prizes for Overall Design $10,000 and $5,000 – Best Taxpayer Usefulness $2,000 and $1,000 – and -Best Financial Capability $2,000 and $1,000-. It says the awards “may be subject to federal income taxes”, but if you are smart enough to redesign the whole system, maybe you will be smart enough to figure out a way around that.
There will be a meeting in Washington on April 17. It is open to the public, but advance registration is required. You don’t have to go to the meeting to compete, but it does seem like it will give you a leg up, as you will hear from leaders at the IRS and Treasury, network with mentors from the challenge and maybe team up with other civic-minded technologists and designers. And there are free beverages and snacks provided by MBA. I don’t know if that part is nailed down, but I would suggest they strongly consider Mountain Dew, but nobody is asking me.
Here is the part that lets me out of this exercise.
Deliverable: Must be an image or browser viewable file. The acceptable image formats: .PNG, .JPG, .GIF, .TIFF, and .PDF. The acceptable browser viewable format is .HTML.
Feasibility: The Challenge requires only that the design of the taxpayer experience be submitted. It is not the responsibility of the entrant to build or code a working version of the design. However, the design must be ultimately implementable using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
I know enough HTML to influence the page-breaks on this platform and I aim to keep it that way. I’m tempted to go to the event to see who shows up at it, but it really seems that they are not all that interested in having tax preparers there as it is the day before this years due date. (That’s because Emancipation Day, one of my favorite holidays is celebrated in Washington DC on the 15th. In Massachusetts and Maine, we get even one more day because the 18th is “One if by land and two if sea” Patriot’s Day).
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. Challenge.gov has been around for several years and has over 600 challenges already completed. Here are some examples. I was going to poke around in them a little more, but I have returns to do.