'The IRS Says There's Always Next Year' (msn.com)
- Reference: 0174989507
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1427242/the-irs-says-theres-always-next-year
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/opinion-the-irs-says-there-s-always-next-year/ar-AA1qtHSC
> Taxpayers endure drudgery to file on time each year, but the tax collectors seem less concerned with deadlines. A new Internal Revenue Service database, more than a decade in the making, will be delayed another year. And its cost is billions of dollars and climbing. The IRS told the press this week that it [1]won't replace its Individual Master File until the 2026 tax year , at the earliest. That falls short of Commissioner Danny Werfel's goal of launching a new system in time for 2025 taxes, and the delay could mean another year of grief for countless taxpayers. The file is the digital silo in which more than 154 million tax files are held, and keeping it up-to-date helps to enable speedy, accurate refunds.
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> The [2]code that powers the database was written in the 1960s by IBM engineers at the same time their colleagues worked on the Apollo program. The system runs on a nearly extinct computer language known as Cobol, and though it retains its basic functionality, maintaining it requires bespoke service. By 2018 the IRS had only 17 remaining developers considered to be experts on the system. The agency has sought and failed to overhaul or replace the database since the 1980s. It spent $4 billion over 14 years to devise upgrades, but it canceled that effort in 2000 "without receiving expected benefits," according to the Government Accountability Office.
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> The costs continue to mount. IRS spending on operating and maintaining its IT systems has risen 35% in the past four years, to $2.7 billion last year from $2 billion in 2019. These costs will "likely continue to increase until a majority of legacy systems are decommissioned," according to a report last month by the agency's inspector general. Each year major upgrades are pushed back adds a larger sum to the final tab. The IRS usually pleads poverty as an excuse for failing to stay up-to-date. Yet Congress gave the agency billions of extra dollars through the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a speedy database overhaul. Since 2022 it has spent $1.3 billion beyond its ordinary budget to modernize its business systems. Taxpayers will have to wait at least another year to see if that investment has paid off.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/opinion-the-irs-says-there-s-always-next-year/ar-AA1qtHSC
[2] https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/15/2232201/irs-has-loads-of-legacy-it-still-has-no-firm-plans-to-replace-it
COBOL is "nearly extinct"? (Score:3)
If COBOL is nearly extinct then why is over a billion new lines of COBOL written per year?
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Indeed. COBOL may not be the new cool thing, but it is in regular use. Same for FORTRAN.
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I just applied for a job that requires two years experience within the last ten years (a strangely precise requirement IMHO) coding FORTRAN. They'd like at least five years experience. They were also after a specific flavor of FORTRAN I'd never heard of before (some PHB figuring there's a massive difference between FORTRANs, I guess).
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Any good coder with real experience in any classical imperative language can do Fortran with a few weeks of learning. Fortran is not that special or complicated. Add experience with OO or concurrent programming in any environment if that is part of the target application.
Expecting several years of coding experience in something reasonably similar is fine. But expecting several years with the flavor they need is just stupid.
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There's nothing wrong with COBOL. But the technical debt they've acquired over the decades is definitely worth a rewrite. It still takes someone with COBOL knowledge to figure out what all the hacks and workarounds are actually doing and to get functionality moved to what's new. If writing from the ground up today, COBOL is not a likely choice just because of the number of people proficient in it.
Replacing monolithic systems all at once is really complex. If they don't modularize at least some of it, th
Re: COBOL is "nearly extinct"? (Score:1)
Most code written in any language before the 80s is unreadable by today's standards because the people writing it came up when people were counting bytes of memory and coders usually worked in assembly, so they took their spaghetti and inscrutable acronyms and abbreviations with them to fortran and c and cobol and whatever.
Java style guides in the 90s were a direct overreaction against this history.
So no, there's nothing wrong with cobol or fortran, but it's still a pain in the ass to deal with cobol or for
Just use a Flat Tax (Score:2)
10% income tax for all.
You make $100,000 a year? Pay $10,000.
You make $1,000,000 a year? Pay $100,000.
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Judaism and Catholocism aren't trying to run a nation-state (well, the Catholics used to).
Re: Just use a Flat Tax (Score:1)
Still do. On paper at least.
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No, money has [1]marginal utility. Progressive taxation makes sense, a flat tax is wildly regressive and would lower receipts (which i know is the point underpinning these ideas, it's just starve-the-beast in tax form) as well as being actually unfair. [wikipedia.org]
A person making $1M can afford to pay more in tax receipts because they have by nature of making that $1M benefitted from the collective productive wealth we all contribute to. You benefit the most, you can pay the most, you will still be rich by the end of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility
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That doesn't solve any of the problems that the IRS are facing with this project. It, in no way, eliminates the opportunity to cheat, the need for audits, nor the needs for credits, exceptions, and other sorts of special handling to support things like single moms, small business owners, property investments, and on and on.
There are places where some simplification of the tax code would provide some benefits, but this one in particular would benefit rich people the most...the more rich the greater the bene
One of the good things Donald Trump did. (Score:3)
He practically gutted the Infernal Revenue Service.
Re:One of the good things Donald Trump did. (Score:4, Informative)
Well when you elect criminals who don’t pay taxes that isn’t a surprise. I thought republicans liked being tough on crime and love law enforcement? Lock up that welfare queen but haha it’s funny when a rich person doesn’t pay their taxes.
Is there something wrong with paying your taxes? Look how much was already recovered from the tax cheats when the IRS is funded. [1]https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/i... [irs.gov]
[1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-tops-1-billion-in-past-due-taxes-collected-from-millionaires-compliance-efforts-continue-involving-high-wealth-groups-corporations-partnerships
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Well he sorta tried but like most things Trump he is too lazy and too ego-centric to actually get things done and then Biden with the IRA bumped up staffing and services which has actually been quite "profitable".
Compared to 2023, the IRS answered over 1 million more taxpayer phone calls this tax season, helped over 170,000 more people in person and saw 75 million more IRS.gov visits fueled by a new and expanded Where’s My Refund? tool. Taxpayers waited, on average, just over three minutes for help on
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Not going after tax cheats that either leads to tax increases or deficits is a good thing?
This like what he did to the Post Office or closing the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness are examples of cutting government that is penny wise and million dollar foolish.
We are all OK with cutting waste, but Donald Trump is a wrecking ball. You don't burn down the house when you want to remodel it.
WakeTFU
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I wish he had done it by sending each state an itemized bill for federal services rendered and letting them collect the taxes instead of the IRS, but [1]that would disproportionately bankrupt many of the red states. [washingtonpost.com]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/07/states-federal-benefits/
Re: One of the good things Donald Trump did. (Score:1)
This used to happen. But the Democrats decided they really wanted the 16th Amendment. You've got to lie in the bed you make.
Not exactly waste (Score:2)
If I were cutting my lawn with a push mower, making and deferring my plans to buy a riding mower might indeed be costing me something. But it's a hell of a lot better than using scissors the whole time.
Inflation Reduction Act (Score:2)
Ah yes, the act designed to reduce inflation by dumping another trillion dollars into the economy.
Early-1980s proposed "Postcard tax form" (Score:1)
Line 1: Total income/gains from all sources: $____
Line 2: Tax liability: [copy line 1]
Line 3: Total withholding: $_____
Line 4: If line 2 greater than line 3, taxes owed: [line 2 minus line 3], skip line 5
Line 5: If line 3 greater than line 2, refund due: [line 3 minus line 2]
Basically, 5 lines to say "how much did you make? send it all in."
This proposed "tax form" was not serious, it offered up by more than one late-night comedian.
There were other variations that amounted to a 100% wealth tax: "How mu
I'll call Mom (Score:1)
She still works in cobol.
Then it's gonna be 18 people who have a vested interest in not outsourcing themselves to the cloud.
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Only 17 developers in 2018... been working on overhauling it since the 1980's... $4 billion over 14 years, ending in 2000... $2.7 billion last year, up from $2 billion in 2019... Since 2022 it has spent $1.3 billion beyond its ordinary budget
If those 17 people aren't multi-billionaires by now, where's all that money going?!??!!
FFS, hire a LOT more developers! With that much money and time on the line, setup multiple developer groups and have them each go at getting to a solution first. You don't even need t