Brief

shl highlights that the IRS has open-sourced its new Tax Withholding Estimator, emphasizing the unusually permissive licensing language: as a U.S. government work it is public domain domestically, and the agency also applies CC0 1.0 worldwide. The linked repository describes TWE 2.0, launched on February 27, 2026, as a federal-only withholding estimator that helps users prepare W-4 or W-4P adjustments for situations such as multiple jobs, self-employment income, and credits or deductions. The release is framed as a transparency move, letting the public inspect how the tax engine estimates liability and withholding. At the same time, the IRS draws a sharp boundary around the repo: it is draft code for collaboration and research, not the official production calculator, and taxpayers are directed to IRS.gov for actual withholding estimates. The presence of Scala build instructions, CI commands, and contributor docs suggests a serious open-source development process rather than a one-off source release.

title: @shl: “As a work of the United States government, this project is in the public domain... (Thread, 2 tweets)
author: shl
contenttype: twitterthread
published: 2026-03-16T16:59:41+00:00
source_url: https://x.com/shl/status/2033589027429884047

word_count: 134

Thread by @shl

Tweet 1/2

“As a work of the United States government, this project is in the public domain within the United States of America. Additionally, we waive copyright and related rights in the work worldwide through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.” The first project accepting

Tweet 2/2

Posted: 2026-03-16T16:50:33.000Z

Engagement: 14 likes, 1 retweets, 1 replies

Quoting @shl

The IRS has a new Tax Withholding Estimator!

Taxpayers enter in their income, expected deductions, and other relevant info to estimate what they’ll owe in taxes at the end of the year, and adjust the withholding on their paycheck.

And it’s open source: https://github.com/IRS-Public/tax-withholding-estimator…