Slashdot Mirror
No EZ Fix For The IRS
meltoast writes "Apparently the IRS is storing all of the taxpaying histories of 227 million individuals and corporations in a system that still runs code written in 1962. CIO Magazine is running a story on the IRS's nearly failed $8 billion modernization attempt that includes missed deadlines, cost overruns of over $200 million and four CIO's in seven years."
FairTax.org
:wq
Yes lets take unemployed people and put them to work manually getting to know the interworkings of the IRS and its databases. They sure wouldn't be tempted to abuse their position would they?
You might be shocked to find out how many low wage earners have access to medical (HMO's and insurance companies), credit (mortage and credit lending agencies) and yes, tax information (federal and private contractors) on you already. There are systems in place to protect privacy at many companies and organizations that deal with this sort of data, but there are always folks that will abuse the system. The solution is to make punishments for identity theft crimes very severe.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
You obviously don't work in Government.
Local and state governments have deadlines just like in the private sector. The only real difference is that we have to deal with a lot more buricratic cr*p.
If any of my projects were 7 years over due, I would expect to get canned, or demoted.
The CIO is usually (in simple terms) in charge of How the company uses IT to accomplish its mission. There is often confusion between the terms CTO and CIO and some companies use them interchangably. However I believe the the correct definition of a CTO oversees technology that the company creates.
In fewest words possible, , A CTO overs creation of tech, a CTO consumes Tech.
Of course maybe this can clear it up more:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/01/06/2236247.s html
From my professor...
"In order to write a good algorithm that can solve a problem, you must be able to solve it yourself."
How would you expect a computer knows how to file return when some people in IRS don't even know how?
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
There's something called ethics. I want to pay my taxes as honestly as possible. And being on the track to become an engineer, if I was given a job, I'll try my darn best to do it well (IRS tax system included).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
yeah, I know.... a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money
Well, I did say that those perverse incentives had nothing to do with the problems. I'm sure that it's the usual amalgam of unrealistic specifications, creeping featuritis, management by committee, and so on, which afflicts pretty much every large project.
Remember ``The Bridge on the River Kwai'' ? Professional pride can get folks to do some crazy things, including shoot themselves in the foot for the public good (think whistle-blowers), or sabatoge their own side's war effort (in that movie), or make it easier for a particularly nasty bureaucracy to do harm.
I would guess that most of the people working on the project are pretty frustrated by the progress it's making, and would be very proud of themselves if they got things back on track. I would also guess that most of them have thought, at one time or another: ``It's a good thing we're not getting all the government we're paying for.''
My point was that any one of the taxpayers who's working on that is going to realize that if it fails, despite his best efforts, there's a bright side: he won't have to worry about his past tax returns coming back to haunt him. The tax code is complex enough, and confusing enough, that everyone is in some danger from the IRS, no matter how hard they try to pay all their taxes.
See what I've been reading.
The big problem is that the politicians tend to make new rules for education loans every second year or so. Then, the system needs to be reprogrammed. Then, you need that COBOL programmer again. And that costs money.
So now they are getting a new solution. It's going to cost a lot. I'm not sure, but I think it was about $80M. That's a lot in Norway. For instance, you could give all secondary-school students free books for that kind of money (they pay it themselves now).
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
The article left out two zeros.
The IRS website publishes stats and has an Excel file reporting that in 2002 it took $0.45 to collect $100.
The figure must be per $100 collected. A simple Google search found the following data for 2001.
t ml
http://www.unclefed.com/Tax-News/2001/nr01-86.h
September 26, 2001
Data Book Details IRS Numbers
Shows Collection Costs Down,
Charitable Groups Grow
WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Services cost for collecting each $100 of tax revenue reached the lowest point since 1954, according to the new IRS Data Book for Fiscal Year 2000.
The Data Book, released today, shows it cost the IRS 39 cents to collect $100 in FY 2000, the smallest amount in more than four decades. In 1993, it cost 60 cents to collect $100.
This is a crock of shit on so many levels that it barely deserves comment. The vast majority of the folks who work for the Fed. Govt, and that includes the IRS, are decent folks who are very skilled at what they do, and muddle through in a broken system that is primarily imposed upon them by Congress. Of course they try to do new things the improve the system, but unless you get a chance to do it all over at the same time, its impossible to ever really fix everything. Just ask the FAA. It only took them 3 trys and about $20 Billion to redo the air traffic control system in the US.
The reason it costs 45 cents to collect a dollar of revenue is the byzantine tax code that has been generated over the 80+ years we have had a federal income tax. We could fix that with a flat tax on ALL income over $25k a year, but that is a different thread all together.
My dad supervised most of the development work done at the IRS that supports the master file. The tax code is so complex that the only people who actually understand are the IT group at IRS, because they are the ones that actually have to implement it. Reading the article, and from first hand experience, the attempts had moderization have failed because Congress and the higher ups in Treasury and the IRS thought contractors could do it better than the in-house folks. Not a big surprise that the project fails when the folks who know the context of the system are not asked to participate in the development of the replacement.
If some group of folks came in and tried to tell me that they knew my job better than I did, but they understand the work did, or why we did it the way we did, I'd be pissed off too.
BTW, if you are wondering, every taxpayer in the US has about 3/4" of tape that contains their entire tax history. The master file lives in a huge vault at the IRS's data center in Martinsburg, WV, which has the biggest damn door I have ever seen. Not quite Cheyanne Mt big, but still pretty good sized.
sPh
The meaning of the acronym CIO in the context of the IRS is explained here (from the horses mouth): IRS Manual - description of the responsibilities of the CIO
Unbelievable. Only on Slashdot would I get called a Socialist. Of course, only on Slashdot would someone make gross assumptions about my entire world view based on a couple of paragraphs.
Nowhere did I say that the higher paying job isn't valued as such by a capitalist economy. That's just high school economics. What I was responding to was a comment indicating that directly linked the act of working hard (which many unskilled workers do for 30+ years) to the rewards of financial success. That's a false cause->effect link, hence my response.
Do I believe that my current situation (incidentally not at that highest rate) comes from the years leading up to my current situation and I know that our economy values that. I'm not complaining.
However, if I compare the amount of work I've put forth to the work my father has done, according to the post I responded to, he should have 10x my net worth. He's worked harder than anyone else I know and gained nearly none of the reward that the parent post claimed is linked.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I did contracting work for the USDA for a while. There were a lot of bad government employees, but I thought most were pretty good. The real problem was the independent contract companies (like the one I worked for). They were only interested in billing hours, not in quality of work. The goverment depended on these companies to give them good advice. That advice usually slanted to what every would bill the most hours.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
most of the companies working on the modernization project are contractors, a lot of them ex-IRS, who make 3 times their IRS pension salary because they are extremely good at their job, and the fucking get things done. i've worked with many of them.
many of the issues of why the modernization project is fucked is salaried upper-upper management of a few companies, not engineers making a paycheck.
and as for IRS employees themselves, they are way more liable for correct tax returns than other taxpayers. they also don't make shit compared to private sector wages, but the retirement and other benefits are outstanding, and few of them would willingly jeopardize that.
your blanket condemnation of people involved in that project is ignorant.
Use a VAT to tax corporate income. Replace the personal income and wage taxes with a consumption tax (money invested is not taxed until it is pulled out for consumption). The nature of a VAT is to pay tax on *everything* but credit tax already paid (i.e. if you pay $10+VAT for a piece of wood, you get to credit the VAT you paid against the VAT you charge on the bookcase you make from the wood).
A VAT is very hard to game. The only deductible expenses are tax already paid. The biggest concern is using business resources for personal use. Even that can be legislated away; enforcement is just tricky.
Remember, a new system doesn't have to be perfect. Just better than the current system, which is a bizarre and ever changing mix of taxable, partially taxable, and non-taxable items.
OK, this article is way light on details, so let me fill you in on the Way Things Are:
Currently, IRS data is stored in several large databases, which are seperate from each other, and are collectively referred to as 'the master file' This financial Voltron is made up of:
The Master File is updated weekly, and is otherwise read only. Workspace is provided in a number of support files:
For manipulatinga ll this data, there are several specialized systems.
The CADE Project is attempting to replace all of this. These systems interact with each other already, and so CADE must attempt to define its own internal interfaces while maintaining the ability to converse with the existing systems. This is why even the first migration (partial migration of the IMF, 1040EZ filers only) has been delayed over and over again. Even this isn't the end of the alphabet soup. There are still payments (ISRP, LBX, RRPS, RPS, MD, EFTPS, FTD) to consider, and metainformation (EONS and its many children) to be collected, among other things I have no doubt forgotten in a sea of COBOL fumes.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.