[HN Gopher] 40 Years of Failure: IRS Unable to Fix Computer System
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40 Years of Failure: IRS Unable to Fix Computer System
Author : reformedben
Score : 19 points
Date : 2022-03-09 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atr.org)
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I would seriously love to read a detailed case study on this.
| unixhero wrote:
| And another one on the US army's failed ERP project.
| https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/lessons-from-the-us-
| ai....
| jimrandomh wrote:
| Previous discussions
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377329 (2018) and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535937 (2020). The reason
| their modernization effort failed was because they lost key
| programmer employees, because they were bureaucratically
| forbidden from paying them market-rate salaries.
| aaronchall wrote:
| I would really like to see the IRS get this done and done well.
| There's really no excuse for their inability to give us a
| preliminary tax report, allow us to input the details they don't
| have, and pay our taxes without all the wasted time and effort.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| In my opinion, a substantial number of taxpayers would not be
| in favor of that, they like our current system of "voluntary
| compliance" because it allows even the little guys the
| opportunity to fudge a little without getting caught.
| Fortunately, most do not take advantage of that opportunity,
| but the "tax gap" (legitimately owed but unreported and
| uncollected taxes) is quite large.
|
| More importantly, automating the keypunching of a few standard
| forms such as W-2, 1099-R, 1099-INT/DIV/B, etc would only cover
| a small portion of the "time and effort" to prepare most tax
| returns. The IRS does not know what your filing status is
| (married filing joint or separate, single, head of household),
| who is a dependent of whom (there are two main flavors of
| dependency to determine), whether and how much you made or lost
| running a business or being a landlord, your medical expenses,
| charitable donations, real property taxes, your total gambling
| wins/losses, the list goes on. Even things that are reported,
| such as contributions to your IRA, don't get reported to the
| IRS until well past the original filing deadline.
|
| Because of all these things, there is no way the IRS could give
| you a "preliminary tax report", they can only import a limited
| set of data for you. California does actually have something
| like what you are asking for, CalFile (formerly ReadyReturn),
| but originally it was limited to "single, no-dependents,
| standard-deduction, only-wage-income, one-employer, with a
| maximum adjusted gross income of $139,917. The purpose of
| ReadyReturn was to make it easier for taxpayers to file their
| returns, and to make the filing process more accurate and
| faster."[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile
| undersuit wrote:
| What if we just eliminated the I get a W-2, I enter the info
| that the IRS already knows into a 3rd party system, the IRS
| accepts it.
|
| We'll never make taxes easier for everyone, and this "tax
| gap" argument is great and all but I don't know why I have to
| do anything for my exceedingly simple taxes.
| lurquer wrote:
| Your W-2 does not come from the IRS, though.
|
| It is created by your employer. The form is simply
| informing you what it reported to the IRS.
|
| The W-2 your employer created and sent could be wrong.
|
| It's a screwed up system.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If other country revenue systems can do this, why do you feel
| the US tax filing landscape is so different? As gamblor956
| mentions in other comments, this is not a technical or
| practical limitation, but regulatory capture via statute.
|
| https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/how-are-
| countrie...
|
| https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-other-
| cou...
|
| > Denmark and Sweden, both small countries, operate tax
| agency reconciliation systems. About 87 percent of Denmark's
| taxpayers and 74 percent of Sweden's had their returns filled
| out by the tax authorities in 1999. Spain, Estonia, Finland,
| Norway, and Iceland have also implemented tax agency
| reconciliation systems.
|
| CalFile was purposely kneecapped in a fight with Intuit.
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1668912 |
| https://escholarship.org/content/qt1tw989zv/qt1tw989zv_noSpl.
| ..
|
| > Under the auspices of the Free File Alliance (FFA), Intuit,
| manufacturer of TurboTax, has been attacking state-run, free
| e-filing services for several years. The latest victim,
| Virginia's successful iFile program, succumbed late last
| year. Through it all, the unquestioned crown jewels of state
| e-filing programs - California's CalFile and ReadyReturn -
| have managed to survive. But this year, Intuit has ratcheted
| up its annual campaign to end the two programs. In the
| process, it is peddling some familiar falsehoods as well as
| some newly crafted misrepresentations.
|
| > This article describes Intuit's nine lies, the false
| arguments about ReadyReturn and CalFile that Intuit and its
| lobbyists have been telling elected officials, staffers, and
| nonprofit organizations serving California's low-income
| communities. It also evaluates Intuit's proposed Free File
| alternative to the state's existing programs. For all of
| Intuit's assertions - whether regarding the purported
| shortcomings of the state programs or the purported benefits
| of the Free File initiative - the article offers a point-by-
| point refutation.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The IRS is not permitted to do that, by law.
|
| You can thank Intuit for that.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| That is not true. In fact, Intuit and H&R Block dropped out
| of the Free File Alliance primarily because of the following
| change made at the end of 2019 to the Memorandum of
| Understanding.
|
| _The following sentence in Article 2 of the MOU is hereby
| stricken from the MOU: "In recognition of this commitment,
| the federal government has pledged to not enter the tax
| return software and e-file services marketplace."_[1]
|
| [1]https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
| utl/FFI%20Signed%20MOU%20Addendu...
| gamblor956 wrote:
| You are confusing two different (but related) things.
|
| The Free File Allowance is intended for lower-income
| individuals to e-file for free. (Some tax service providers
| still participate.) The IRS withdrew from the agreement
| preventing them from providing their own such software to
| low-income taxpayers, but it's a moot point since _they don
| 't have the resources to create such software._
|
| What the parent commenter was referring to was the EU-style
| tax systems, where they send you a pre-filled in tax
| return, you verify the amounts and sign, with minimal
| input/preparation required by the taxpayer. _That_ is what
| the IRS is prevented from doing, by law, as a result of
| Intuit 's lobbying.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| For several years, starting when I was married and began filing
| jointly with my spouse, we have figured our tax owed (we rarely
| have a refund), paid it, and then several months later receive in
| the mail a two dollar check from the Treasury with no explanatory
| letter. This happens whether we e-file, do a paper return or use
| TurboTax.
|
| My pet theory/fantasy is that my spouse's very long hyphenated
| foreign name is overflowing some buffer in an ancient IBM 1402
| program somewhere in Washington and causing our "tax-owed" to be
| decremented by two dollars when our returns are processed, but
| have no specific evidence of this.
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