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

nextgov.com

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

#81

Post by conanbatt »

monocasa wrote: post #69
conanbatt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taxe…

First off, the difference between regressive and progressive says nothing about how the taxes are spent. A flat tax is regressive by definition. Secondly, I'm not a big fan of how you (and quite a few economists) conflate personal and corporate income taxes. It really muddies the water as even questions like "what even is income" is different between the two. Additionally, flat tax doesn't go well with the left. On t…

> Secondly, I'm not a big fan of how you (and quite a few economists) conflate personal and corporate income taxes. It really muddies the water as even questions like "what even is income" is different between the two.

It was an example of how nominal tax rate is not the same as effective tax rate. For example, mortgage interest deductions are a regressive benefit which lowers the effective tax rate. Unfortunatenly, we cannot make good date on what the effective tax rate is because it is protected information.

> On the personal end, you greatly increase the tax burden on those least able to bear it, with an increase in benefits being totally orthogonal (most flat tax proposals intend to be revenue neutral)

That depends on what you cut. And thats why i say that you need to look at the revenue and the expenditures to know if taxes are regressive or not.

For example, Federal income tax is nominally progressive, but california has plenty of regressive taxes: sales taxes and property taxes that favor older tenants. In general state and city taxes are regressive, because those are the easiest to levy.

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

#82

Post by Elv13 »

varjag wrote: post #43
thaumaturgy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and it was the re-collation step that took a dedicated team of professionals a full day.

To be fair, 140 million taxpayers account for a lot of punchcards.

(assuming it is not /sarcasm)

The data is not stored in punch cards, the programs are/were. The data is/was stored in tapes or in tape emulators.

Storing data on cards would make random access wayyyy too slow (the operator would have to retrieve and load the card and keep them sorted manually, which is impossible to do at scale)

On tape, however, you can predict the distance you have to rewind by computing the physical length each records take if they have auto incremented IDs. A tape can contain a lot of records. Especially if it's a modern one or an array backed emulated one. At least that's what some people I went to school with told me it's how they did it.

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

#83

Post by s2g »

acdha wrote: post #71
mbell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

Most people would like that but think about how that sounds from a budget perspective: a bunch of pricey employees for something which seems to already be working fine, with a constant stream of political grandstanding lies about waste and overpaid staff. Most big organizations have trouble funding maintenance & operations versus new features and the government is especially subject to that because there are so many…

It sounds like literally any other piece of equipment you buy.

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

#84

Post by s2g »

reaperducer wrote: post #70
mbell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

> Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date Easy to say as a grunt, but businesses (and governments) are run by managers and accountants. What you describe is upgrading for upgrading's sake. If a system isn't broken, there's no point or financial reason to replace it. Imagine trying to upgrade a system with incredibly complex data on a BILLION users that has to work 24/7, then deal with massive data…

Imagine if you were an airline that didn't bother to maintain planes.

When you build software you should plan to maintain it. Bug fixes, features, upgrades, etc...

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

#85

Post by dsfyu404ed »

reaperducer wrote: post #63
cptskippy wrote: post #54

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 cl…

It's general reporting by general reporters using general language for the general public. It's not a tech publication. Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software. The system failed. That's what his tax dollars pay for.

There's no reason not to include the details. People who don't care can ignore them.

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

#86

Post by acdha »

s2g wrote: post #83
acdha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people would like that but think about how that sounds from a budget perspective: a bunch of pricey employees for something which seems to already be working fine, with a constant stream of political grandstanding lies about waste and overpaid staff. Most big organizations have trouble funding maintenance & operations versus new features and the government is especially subject to that because there are so many…

It sounds like literally any other piece of equipment you buy.

Yes, and there are plenty of examples of people asking for maintenance funding, being told to wait for a better budget year, and eventually having to pay considerably more when something blows up.

Software is especially prone to this as many people think of it as a project with a defined end date rather than an ongoing endeavor.

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

#87

Post by monocasa »

conanbatt wrote: post #81
monocasa wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, the difference between regressive and progressive says nothing about how the taxes are spent. A flat tax is regressive by definition. Secondly, I'm not a big fan of how you (and quite a few economists) conflate personal and corporate income taxes. It really muddies the water as even questions like "what even is income" is different between the two. Additionally, flat tax doesn't go well with the left. On t…

> Secondly, I'm not a big fan of how you (and quite a few economists) conflate personal and corporate income taxes. It really muddies the water as even questions like "what even is income" is different between the two. It was an example of how nominal tax rate is not the same as effective tax rate. For example, mortgage interest deductions are a regressive benefit which lowers the effective tax rate. Unfortunatenly,…

Once again, progressive vs regressive has nothing to do with how much you get back in services. That's literally not a component of the definition. You might be confused because deductions are a component of how regressive a tax is.

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

#88

Post by dsfyu404ed »

cafard wrote: post #76
jesusthatsgreat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bec…

Modern cars in general get much better mileage and are much safer to drive in. (Yes, airbag shrapnel has happened.)

Only if you're driving forwards. The crash test rating arms race gave us vehicles we can't see out of then we backed over so many kids that the federal government mandated a rear camera in everything.

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

#89

Post by mark212 »

olivermarks wrote: post #5

'The Individual Master File contains data from 1 billion taxpayer accounts dating back several decades and is the chief IRS application responsible for receiving 100 million Americans’ individual taxpayer data and dispensing refunds. ' I hope they bought a new hard drive to back it up...

don't know about you, but I'm hoping they didn't.

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

#90

Post by mankash666 »

cptskippy wrote: post #54

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 cl…

Feel free to not read articles written by non-tech people. Or, acknowledge the fact that a journalism major can only put in words what he understands of a deeply technical matter that's outside his expertise
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