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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."
doesnt unix still run code from the 1970's or there abouts? just because its old doesnt mean it sucks. linux still runs code from its early days also. just a question anthony
That's exactly how Joe Congressman defends pork.
Yeah, and you'd have the most unfair (notice I didn't say inequitable) taxing system ever. What a mess this would be! The poor, who currently pay basically no taxes on their 18K per year suddenly owe $3.600 / year, which is like 4 months rent. The rich making $1million per year owe 200,000, but that doesn't affect them in the least - 800K is still ashitload of money.
We have tax breaks because we want to ENCOURAGE people to get an education and child care, so that they dont have to decide between rent and school.
The whole concept of a universal flat tax is just silly if you think about it for more than 5ns.
CTO I believe I would have canned the whole project and started anew as from the sounds of it
That's the right thing to do, of course.
Practically, though, doing this kind of thing is difficult in government.
Your first presentation is with the people that give you funding. You tell them you want to start from scratch.
They ask you "Are you telling me that the $8billion we've given you has been wasted? Do you have any idea how bad this will make us look in the press? If you ask for this kind of change in course, there's no guarantee we could get the funding at all!"
Meanwhile, lots of nice underlings busting their butts for you will be seeking hints as to whether they'll even have jobs next month...
Oh, and there'll be vendors promising magic bullets.
Bearing up under this kind of pressure will be why you're making the money as a government CIO.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That's not a solution, that's an inefficient kludge.
The only reason why people commit crimes is that they believe they won't be caught, so the severity of the punishment is mostly irrelevant.
The evidence for this is very strong. Many countries have tried, at times, to apply the death penalty to an excessively wide range of crimes, but have always failed miserably at preventing their ocurrence.
Even if you could magically disintegrate all the criminals in the world, there would be more to take their place tomorrow morning.
Simple solution to that, suggested above. The first $X aren't collected. E.g., the first $5k aren't collected. People who make less than $25k pay no taxes. You're effectively only taxed for what you make over $25k (or whatever arbitrary figure you choose).
The rich making $1million per year owe 200,000, but that doesn't affect them in the least - 800K is still ashitload of money.
That's BS. People who make $1M still notice $200k. It may not hurt them AS MUCH. But it still hurts them.
Although government agencies (bureaucracies) are accountable to nobody, and as a result, the IRS would never support its own downsizing, you've hit at the real root of the problem.
If the Internal Revenue Code weren't so complex, the IRS would be forced to downsize, no matter how hard it screamed for self-preservation.
The revolving-door "in-house"/"contractor"/"in-house" system you describe is symptomatic of bureaucracy. But that bureaucracy wouldn't exist if Congress didn't invent it.
If every Congressman had to do his or her own taxes, with pencil, paper, and 4-function calculator, and with no assistance from anything but the IRS help line, web site, and published forms, the Internal Revenue Code would be fixed within a month.
Unfortunately, the odds of Congressmen having to face the monster they created are zero. As much as I hate the IRS - they're just the guys running the trains and seeing to it that the gold teeth are accounted for. The real villians in the story of high tax compliance costs are the ones who issue the orders that we get into the fucking boxcars.