Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#51

Post by nickthegreek »

thegrim33 wrote: post #41
bdangubic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correct - as long as they don’t make 7-figures. anyone over 7-figures is auto-exempt

"Last September the IRS announced it would hire 3,700 new agents to help increase scrutiny of taxes paid by corporations, wealthy people and the private investment funds they increasingly favor. " [ https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/02/inside-the-irs-unit... ] "IRS launches new effort aimed at high-income non-filers; 125,000 cases focused on high earners, including millionaires" [ https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs…

You know they are about to fire thousands of them right?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-irs-prepares-lay-off-tho...

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#52

Post by dartos »

fragmede wrote: post #27
dartos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from that article > IBM is giving its mainframe customers a tool infused with generative AI to translate COBOL code to Java Hard to wholesale believe claims when they are literally the ones selling that capability. It probably works well for already clear and well structured cobol.

there's https://www.codeconvert.ai/cobol-to-python-converter if you prefer python

> It probably works well for already clear and well structured cobol.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#53

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mullingitover wrote: post #39
yalogin wrote: post #33

Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. Reading through the article, it's not one or two machines but 8 Blackwell nodes, so quite some firepower for compute. Wonder what part of the audit or tax prep requires a GPU farm.

If you're wondering if the "Efficiency Department" is actually about efficiency, or if they're just cosplaying political Santa Claus, look for cuts to the IRS. The IRS is the most bang for the buck government department. Every dollar spent there nets out many more, because they're chronically under-resourced to audit the whales who can trivially hide their tax obligations. Naturally whenever there's a hint that the d…

> The IRS is the most bang for the buck government department. Every dollar spent there nets out many more, because they're chronically under-resourced to audit the whales who can trivially hide their tax obligations.

This is just a trope.

Auditing big whales is often not the most efficient use of resources because their taxes are a) much more complicated, and so more expensive to audit and b) more likely to have been done by a team of competent lawyers, so even though they're engaged in all kinds of shenanigans, the shenanigans are legal and there is no money to be had by auditing them.

Where the IRS can "turn a profit" is by auditing small and medium businesses, because they're more likely to have screwed up, and auditing them is cheap to the IRS. But this has a different problem. It isn't cheap to the taxpayer being audited; they pay an order of magnitude more to go through the audit than the IRS does. And then most of them are innocent, even though the IRS makes it back from the few that aren't. For obvious reasons the innocent ones hate this with the fire of a thousand suns, because nobody compensates them for their costs even though they did nothing wrong. But if you actually did compensate them for their costs then it wouldn't be net-positive for the IRS to do all those audits.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#54

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jmclnx wrote: post #14
johnnyanmac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they keep failing? Don't tell me it's also COBOL that no one knows (or rather, isn'tpayong enough to remaining experts to know). I (really) don't think AI is the solution in its current iteration, but it's unfortunate that it seems like they keep failing.

The software is was written in the 60s and patched, patched, patched... I knew someone who worked on it, he passed away in the late 90s. Plus tax laws change every year, in many cases causing massive changes. Every conversion failed because no one is left fully understands the whole system. Plus for a conversion, you need a long quiet time, with the tax laws you never get that. Not to mention, even with Biden's addit…

The tax code is legislation and they're the government. Instead of trying to translate it from old COBOL spaghetti code, discard the existing code and implement a new system from the tax code.

And while you're having a bunch of lawyers go through the tax code in order to do this, have them recommend simplifications to make it easier, so that instead writing new complicated software, you write new simpler tax laws.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#55

Post by econ »

manquer wrote: post #37
enos_feedler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe they'll just do all our taxes for us?

A lot of developed countries do this. They just sent you your assessment automatically with they you think you/they owe if anything, you need to file anything only there if you believe there is difference . The US system is pretty backwards really, most of the taxes are deducted at source anyway the system already has a good idea of your income/taxes owed. If IRS calculate returns at scale using tax deducted at sourc…

Yes, every few years I press ok. They want me to do it every year but that just seems like a lot of work. So far they got everything right. I really want this for small businesses in real time. The payment processor already deals with most refunds. It would be nice to fill taxes with each purchase, payment or invoice automatically. Should automate the payments too! Give them the (approved) work schedule, let them provide a clock card machine. Pay the salary end of the shift.

Why should we have a party dragging out a transaction? Just complete it immediately and ideally in isolation.

Then they might as well also run the bank, the payment processor and the recruitment agency.

People here in NL are afraid to start a business not because they can't deliver the product or service or that they can't find customers, they are afraid of the tax office.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#56

Post by jauntywundrkind »

enos_feedler wrote: post #34
yalogin wrote: post #33

Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. Reading through the article, it's not one or two machines but 8 Blackwell nodes, so quite some firepower for compute. Wonder what part of the audit or tax prep requires a GPU farm.

maybe they'll just do all our taxes for us?

Direct File I think helped some. Deleted by Musk.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#58

Post by jauntywundrkind »

yalogin wrote: post #33

Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore. Reading through the article, it's not one or two machines but 8 Blackwell nodes, so quite some firepower for compute. Wonder what part of the audit or tax prep requires a GPU farm.

The Tech Right ascendant (in this admin) claims AI is going to magically fix & improve systems, will let us fire thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of people

Some of this is just a war against the middle class.

But more seriously this is a desire to let unregulated unchecked systems draw judgement upon people. This is like the UK postal crisis, where the UK has long held a legal system that assumed computerized systems are correct and not questionable.

Once the AI is in power, it can be tuned to the biases of the ultra-wealthy tech-right. Technocratic dominion.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#59

Post by econ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54
jmclnx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software is was written in the 60s and patched, patched, patched... I knew someone who worked on it, he passed away in the late 90s. Plus tax laws change every year, in many cases causing massive changes. Every conversion failed because no one is left fully understands the whole system. Plus for a conversion, you need a long quiet time, with the tax laws you never get that. Not to mention, even with Biden's addit…

The tax code is legislation and they're the government. Instead of trying to translate it from old COBOL spaghetti code, discard the existing code and implement a new system from the tax code. And while you're having a bunch of lawyers go through the tax code in order to do this, have them recommend simplifications to make it easier, so that instead writing new complicated software, you write new simpler tax laws.

Estonia

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#60

Post by hindsightbias »

yostrovs wrote: post #45
mullingitover wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're wondering if the "Efficiency Department" is actually about efficiency, or if they're just cosplaying political Santa Claus, look for cuts to the IRS. The IRS is the most bang for the buck government department. Every dollar spent there nets out many more, because they're chronically under-resourced to audit the whales who can trivially hide their tax obligations. Naturally whenever there's a hint that the d…

The IRS Individual Master File, running on IBM mainframes, may be the oldest software alive. Perhaps there's a need for an update. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/636196-ol...

Why update what isn’t broken?
Post reply on HN