IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware • Hacker News Board

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#51

Post by jesusthatsgreat » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

> Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced.

The problem is 'better' is subjective. Plenty of mechanics will tell you older cars are better because they're easier to repair, don't require specialist machine diagnostics, have manual buttons / levers / knobs that are easier to troubleshoot than digital versions.

To most drivers however, newer cars are better because they're more comfortable and convenient to drive around in.

'Better' means different things to different people.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#52

Post by bsder » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #16

favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

How are they retaining staff with the skill-set to maintain that code?

They don't retain staff. But the ones who retire or leave can generally get a very large contract when things like this pop up.

Until, of course, they are all gone. At which point the system will need to be rewritten by IBM, Oracle or some other useless, gigantic consulting firm.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#53

Post by occams_chainsaw » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Why wouldn't "the kids of IT today" ever learn that?

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#54

Post by cptskippy » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s.

It's also clear the authors don't entirely understand what they're talking about. In the second article linked to, which is written by an author of this article, he states "[t]he Individual Master File, a massive application written in the antiquated and low-level Assembly programming language" as if to imply there is but one assembly language.

A GAO report I found chasing the last link in the article indicates that the two oldest systems in the Government are the IMF and Business Master File (BMF) which it says both run on IBM Hardware. My guess would be that the IRS is running modern z/Architecture mainframes in System 360 Compatibility mode. The System 360 dates back to the early 60s and IBM has maintained backward compatibility with it all the way up through z/Architecture systems. This would also explain why they're so far over budget and behind schedule.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#55

Post by jaclaz » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

>"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

... which is a very good example of Catch 22 logic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)

I personally prefer Groucho Marx :

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/04/18/groucho-resigns/

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#56

Post by js8 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

What kind of hardware was it running on? The article is not very specific about that.

(At first I thought that they upgraded IBM mainframe to z14, and that caused the crash, but it's not yet 60 years old.)

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#57

Post by cptskippy » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

otoburb wrote: post #3

>> Still, the crash forced the IRS to extend the tax filing deadline one day, delaying some 14 million submissions. For a system that is supposedly so brittle, they were able to get enough of it back up and running to at least accept submissions within one day ? That's pretty amazing for 60 year old technology.

It's more like it took them an entire day to figure out how to reboot a VM instance.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#58

Post by cptskippy » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #56

What kind of hardware was it running on? The article is not very specific about that. (At first I thought that they upgraded IBM mainframe to z14, and that caused the crash, but it's not yet 60 years old.)

They use very broad terms to imply it was 60 year old hardware that failed but early on in the article state it was an 18 month old piece of hardware in a "system" that dates back to the 60s. If you dig into some of the other links and a GAO report you learn that there's two programs, the IMF and BMF, that are partially written in assembly that dates back to the 60s.

They're most likely running some z/Architecture in System 360 virtualization mode.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#59

Post by js8 » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #34

The question for the industry remains: how do we deal with systems that should be up for 10 years? 25 yrs? 50 yrs? 100 yrs? We didn't even have computers as they exist today 50 years ago. How do we separate business logic in a self-contained way that can be independent of hardware and (from a certain level) software?

IBM mainframe assembler is actually somewhat abstracted from the hardware. The original assembler is very CISC-like, but today it's running on RISC-like cores.

As for the hardware, I/O is done through channel programs, which can have any device as a backend - it's a generic way to do DMA.

There is a lot of legacy stuff (like CCKD, VTAM) but more or less it's all emulated today by the hardware/software.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#60

Post by conanbatt » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #29

briandear wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is why we have a tax system that would need 10,000 additional customer support reps. The problem isn’t a lack of reps, it’s a system that requires that many reps. The flat tax, file-on-a-postcard system proposed by 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz was mocked by the establishment because it seemed tha politicians on both sides have a vested interest in a complex tax code — it is the means by whic…

You can stay away from regressive schemes like a flat tax, and have a tax system with a rubberstamp level of UX. That's how it works in most of Europe and could work here. The IRS already has all of the information needed outside of gambling and stocks, and could simply send you forms already filled out for you to sign. H&R Block and TurboTax simply heavily lobby to keep this from happening to keep their business mod…

Whats interesting about the flat taxes is that it makes it hard to avoid at the highest levels, where complex tax structures end up having a very variant level of taxation. Much like corporate taxation is 35%, but google or facebook pay only 11%.

Milton Friedman used to say that a flat tax of 15% would be enough to replace the entire scheme of income tax. There is also one major boon: lots of capital is spent on taxes, from accountants to lawyers to gubernamental organizations, etc etc.

An effective 15% rate without exemptions would fly very well with the right (simple flat taxes) an the left (no exemptions) but as MF said, the political stances on this topic dont trust each other and they are both right: even if we moved to such a system, the right would still advocate for exemptions and the left for increases in taxation.

Its a noticeable deadlock.

I also want to mention that flat taxes are not regressive by definition. The progressiveness or regressiveness in that case requires to see where the taxes are spent.