Crunch Time For IRS Data Centers 277
1sockchuck writes "It's crunch time for the Internal Revenue Service. As the IRS processes the annual crescendo of returns around today's tax deadline, the state of the agency's infrastructure depends upon who you ask. IT executives at the IRS say it has made huge strides in modernizing its data centers, which processed 139 million returns and issued $298 billion in refunds in 2009. Independent tests say the IRS web site is the fastest US government site, and one of the fastest on the web. But a key government watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, says the modernization effort hasn't moved quickly enough, and continues to fault the IRS for security weaknesses."
Re:Oopsies! (Score:3, Interesting)
By those numbers the average refund is $2143.88. WTF.
It could be easier (Score:5, Interesting)
Scanning today's news turns up a lot of good examples for how the code could be simplified.
The five dumbest parts of the U.S. tax code [msn.com]
1) Ethanol credits increase the price of food, and give paper manufacturers more money in credits than they make from selling paper.
2) Exemption for inherited stock-gains.
3) Mortgage-interest deduction encourages people to buy as much house as they can afford, and encourages owning over renting to the detriment of other investments.
4) Exemption on employer-provided health insurance encourages employers to give more health insurance instead of wage increases, and discourages health insurers from competing on price.
5) Municipal-bond-interest exclusion gives more benefit to rich bond owners than it does to the municipalities that issue the bonds.
Congressman Wyden leads effort to simplify tax code [statesmanjournal.com]
Taxes: There is a Better Way [fosters.com] by U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg
Re:Oopsies! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not surprising to me. My wife was bitching at me last night because we paid in less than $50 instead of getting a multi-thousand-dollar refund like her friends at work. They're all blowing the cash on down payments for new cars, vacations to the Caribbean, etc. Meanwhile, I continue to budget for the big-ticket items and save for them on a monthly basis.
So I told her that she wasn't bitching when she was spending the extra $200 she took home each month, and she wasn't bitching when she saw the amount I had put into savings from my pay last year.
Needless to say, I slept on the couch.
But the point is that among people who get a refund, a lot of them get a BIG refund. Even when I was a kid, I was getting refunds around $2k because I was a dependent of my parents even though I made less than $20k a year.
Re:Infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally agreed with your first paragraph - increased complexity dramatically increases computing (including development) costs, and the complexity of the system is Congress' fault, not the IRS's.
While the second point is true in terms of overall visits, I'm not sure how many of those sites are processing that many form submissions (over SSL) with the amount of data submitted with a tax return (including schedules, supporting documents, etc.), that then needs to be validated (one assumes) and inserted into a database (though probably a lot of the business-logic/accounting type validation may occur during later batch processing).
Plus other high-volume sites use their servers year round (more or less - though to the extent that it's seasonal, some, like Amazon, started renting out their excess capacity at other times), and such infrastructure is certainly not cheap. What happens to all this computing power the rest of the year?
Re:It could be easier (Score:0, Interesting)
You realize that in order to not destroy the economy completely that the phase-out on this would have to *start* after 30-50 years? If the mortgage-interest deduction was immediately eliminated I'd be willing to wager that you'd have a 50% foreclosure rate within 3-5 years. The elimination of this deduction does not just hit people that are on the edge in terms of finances/credit/debt; this hits people all the way up to those with wages in the 50th - 70th percentile and zero debt outside of their mortgage.
I can only assume one or more of these is true:
a) You don't have two brain cells to rub together;
b) You're one of those "Dr. Strangelove" types that thinks we'd all be happy living in mega apartment complexes and conserving as many resources as possible (don't laugh, SciAm had plenty of articles like that from people with Ph.D degrees a couple of years ago during the height of the global warming frenzy);
c) You fancy yourself a "Robin Hood"-type person, doing your best to bring down "the man."
Besides, any member of Congress knows that they would lose their seat if they even HINTED they were thinking about sponsoring legislation to remove the mortgage interest deduction.
I agree the tax code is needlessly complicated, but there are a lot better places to start looking immediately for simplification than the mortgage interest deduction.
Re:Good for them (Score:2, Interesting)
States receiving less Fed money than paid Fed taxes(IE, can legitimately complain about the Fed stealing from them):
Washington(D)
Oregon(D)
California(D)
Nevada(D)
Colorado(D)
Texas(R)
Minnesota(D)
Wisconsin(D)
Michigan(D)
Illinois(D)
Florida(D)
New York(D)
New Jersey(D)
Delaware(D)
New Hampshire(D)
Massachusetts(D)
Connecticut(D)
Hrm... Only red state is Texas. Guess I'll have to move there before I can bitch.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't use thousands of clerks to figure out what could be a flat percentage of people's income. I also don't use nuclear ICBMs and wouldn't want to. I do send money to places like Haiti, already did before the earthquake, and do a lot more good with it without some random number of federal fuck-ups handling the money on the way there and getting paid a salary out of my funds to fill out more paperwork about it.
Just exactly how much waste, corruption, and antisocial behavior is acceptable? How much of our taxes actually pay for services? How much of our income does the empire deserve, and how much are we willing to give up for stupidity in our name?
False dilemma (Score:3, Interesting)
Your argument is a false dilemma; either the government will provide these things, or they will not be provided. It ignores the alternative of other institutions providing them.
You get the todays talking out of your ass award (Score:4, Interesting)
So I guess the "This Road Is Being Paid by Federal Funds" sign I drove by on the way to work today was all part of a vast conspiracy.
For years, there's been a pie chart near the end of every for 1040 instruction booklet showing how incoming and outgoing funds are allocated. Interest on the national debt is 8%.
This year it's on page 100: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf [irs.gov]
Re:Question (Score:1, Interesting)
There are a lot of reasons one would wait till near the end:
- you owe the government money and don't want to part with it early (as you mentioned)
- you're financial situation is complex (not a W2 employee, complex investments) and gathering the information from sources beyond your control can take months
- you have a trust directed to your benefit and it takes the trust a while to provide you with K1
- you are waiting till you have enough to contribute to your IRA (i can contribute till April 15 2010 for an 09 tax deduction)
Just my 2c.
Re:Answer; lowers the chance of an audit (Score:3, Interesting)
Staggered Due Dates (Score:2, Interesting)
If there was a way to stagger the due dates, such as by state or last name letter, then they wouldn't have such a huge peak to build infrastructure and staffing around. They could split the load over the year. The cost of handling such a huge peak is passed onto us taxpayers in the end[1].
For example, CA and TX may be due in January, NY and SC in February, etc.
[1] double entendre
Re:Staggered Due Dates (Score:3, Interesting)
I considered splitting the US into 4 regions, and doing each tax region at a different time. That's an issue if you move. What if you earn income in multiple regions?
The next idea was to split the population into 4 groups, and file in quarters. Still, how do you do this? Based on SSN? Based on birthday?
Then it hit me....Happy Birthday! Your taxes are due!
Make taxes due within 2 weeks of each person's birthday. That would spread them over the entire year, and would spread the workload out accordingly. Not a great birthday present, but I wonder how much money that would save....