---
title: "Discussion on \"Building in Public: Why I Created an Open-Source US Lottery Tax Calculator for 2026\" | Hashnode"
description: "Discussion on \"Building in Public: Why I Created an Open-Source US Lottery Tax Calculator for 2026\". Why I built a free, open-source 2026 Powerball tax calculator. Get exact state and federal take-home pay estimates instantly."
url: "https://hashnode.com/posts/building-in-public-why-i-created-an-open-source-us-lottery-tax-calculator-for-2026/6a21006b2f611e6372d0a422"
---

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# [Building in Public: Why I Created an Open-Source US Lottery Tax Calculator for 2026](https://powerballtax.hashnode.dev/building-in-public-why-i-created-an-open-source-us-lottery-tax-calculator-for-2026?utm_source=hashnode&utm_medium=feed)

Why I built a free, open-source 2026 Powerball tax calculator. Get exact state and federal take-home pay estimates instantly.

Jun 4 · 2 min read · powerballtax.hashnode.dev  
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-   [#indie-hacker](https://hashnode.com/tag/indie-hacker)
-   [#opensource](https://hashnode.com/tag/opensource)
-   [#fintech](https://hashnode.com/tag/fintech)

## Written by

[Ryan | PowerballTax](https://hashnode.com/@powerballtax)

@powerballtax · Menlo Park, USA

  
[View profile](https://hashnode.com/@powerballtax)

Indie hacker & creator of PowerballTax.com. Building open-source lottery data tools and sharing thoughts on developer experience.

Indie hacker & full-stack developer. Creator of PowerballTax.com, a dedicated 2026 US lottery tax calculator and live dashboard. Passionate about building open-source data tools, clean browser extensions, and automating financial workflows to make lottery tax planning transparent for everyone.

## Responses 1

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[Ryan | PowerballTax](https://hashnode.com/@powerballtax)

[Jun 4](https://hashnode.com/posts/building-in-public-why-i-created-an-open-source-us-lottery-tax-calculator-for-2026/6a21006b2f611e6372d0a422/comment/6a212b9ff0946b685c80f20a)

Hey everyone! 👋 I’m Ryan, the maker of PowerballTax. I built this because I couldn't find a clean, ad-free calculator for the 2026 brackets. The whole thing is open-source and built with Next.js & Vercel.

Let me know what you think of the UI, or if you have any questions about the data scraping part! I'll be hanging around in the comments today.