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The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

theintercept.com

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Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#61

Post by mullingitover »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #53
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 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 bee…

> This is just a trope.

Do you have citations to back up this assertion? The GAO seems to say otherwise[1].

[1] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106112

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#62

Post by hindsightbias »

conradev wrote: post #9
jmclnx wrote: post #2

This will not end well. The IRS has tried many times to replace their mainframe systems and failed. So they are upgrading to AI ? I thought Trump was the "save waste" guy. These are finanical systems, they need to add/subtract and multiply/divide lots of transactional data. AI not needed.

> These are finanical systems, they need to add/subtract and multiply/divide lots of transactional data. AI not needed. The IRS gets 125 million paper forms every year: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/29/politics/tax-season-irs-digit... They tried and failed to scan some of them with OCR: "OCR – This project involved extracting machine-readable data from low-resolution and poor-quality images (both digital and paper) wit…

The 1040EZ was being OCR’d forty years ago.

It doesn’t scale to 1040s and schedules because today’s biologics don’t know how to write anymore.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#64

Post by wmf »

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...

The IRS hired a guy to rewrite the Master File in Java a few years back and they ran out of money when he was almost finished.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#65

Post by wmf »

hindsightbias wrote: post #60
yostrovs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

US tax filing is broken compared to many European countries that automatically prepare the tax return.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#66

Post by hindsightbias »

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 IMF and BMF aren’t just software. They’re the code in tax code. It’s the law, not the printed thing in a binder.

If you have the gall to question IMF behavior vs printed tax code and write it up internally, you will get a reply from an tax code analyst in a couple of months from WV explaining why you’re wrong, selections from code, selections from IRS legal interpretations, applicable court cases past, present and pending.

It’s all very polite, but you quickly realize they’re lawyers and you aren’t.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#67

Post by hindsightbias »

wmf wrote: post #65
hindsightbias wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why update what isn’t broken?

US tax filing is broken compared to many European countries that automatically prepare the tax return.

That’s by congressional design. Don’t blame the mainframe.

DOGE just shut down the auto prepare because gov’t is bad and wasteful.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#68

Post by wmf »

xnx wrote: post #31
johnnyanmac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax code is complex by design though. They only want those who pay full time financial advisors to find loopholes to find loopholes.

The rich would also be happy with a 30 percent national sales tax.

Voters are dumb but not that dumb.

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#69

Post by throw0101d »

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.

> Isn't the IRS on the chopping block? I know they killed the free tax filing feature for citizen. I cannot keep track anymore.

The IRS is mentioned in Project 2025's chapter on Treasury:

* https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...

See "TAX ADMINISTRATION" section. Some points with-in that:

> Doubling the IRS? The Inflation Reduction Act contains a radical $80 billion expansion of the IRS—enough to double the size of its workforce.34 Unless Congress reverses this policy, the IRS will become much more intrusive and impose still greater costs on the American people.

[…]

> Management. The IRS has approximately 81,000 employees.36 Of those, only two are presidential appointments—the Commissioner and the Chief Counsel.37 As a practical matter, it is impossible for these two officials to overcome bureau- cratic inertia and to implement policy changes that the IRS bureaucracy wants to impede. That is why, notwithstanding decades of sound and fury, almost nothing has changed at the IRS.

On the second point, "Management": who doesn't / wouldn't want more political apparatchiks with-in the tax system?

As for the second point: the IRS has a resource problem (partly due to retirements), and needs to hire a bunch of folks now to be able to train them and pass on institutional knowledge:

> “When we hear 87,000 agents, it sounds like a horrifying army of people. But it’s what they need to maintain, because people are exiting in volumes,” says Robert Cordasco, a certified public accountant and founder of Cordasco & Co. in Savannah, Georgia. “I don’t know how much it adds as much as it gets us to the status quo.”

* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/irs-is-not-hiring-an-army-of...

* https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2024/jun/expert-wa...

A story from before the funding bump:

> Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.

* https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...

Re: The IRS Is Buying an AI Supercomputer from Nvidia

#70

Post by throw0101d »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #53
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 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 bee…

> 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.

For "x" hours of work, the big whales can also potentially bring in a lot more money than a bunch of small minnows.

Before it got a funding bump, the IRS went after minnows because of resource constraints:

> Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.

* https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...

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