
The IRS System Processing Your Taxes Is Almost 60 Years Old - blahyawnblah
https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/03/irs-system-processing-your-taxes-almost-60-years-old/146770/
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komali2
Maybe I'm too young to have a good perspective here, but in my limited time on
earth, it seems more and more that the US is "pushing off" things, to what end
I don't know.

What does my country _think_ will happen if it continues to strip education
budgets? Don't we know enough from our experience with Mississippi? Haven't
the teacher strikes taught us our lesson? Why did America reject the concept
of universal education, do we not believe that engineers and doctors generate
enough profit for our country? Are we not understanding that other countries
will fill the brain gap?

Why is infrastructure being so universally neglected? Why is public transit
being reviled? _What happens when the oil runs out?_ Do we just not care? Why
does nobody in government seem to give a shit?

Why is funding being stripped more and more from critical organizations like
the IRS? Are we just pushing it to see how far we can go? "Well, it hasn't
completely annihilated the coffers of the USGOV yet, I guess we can keep
pulling money out of it." Is that the justification?

I hate to be so fatalistic but it also seems like the people with power have
already given up and are strip-mining what they can before the whole thing
falls around everyone's head. I mean, I guess we survived the dotcom bust and
the housing crisis... but people smarter than me have been writing that we're
heading straight towards not only another housing crisis, but an even worse
student loan crisis.

Older people, what's your perspective? Is the castle crashing around our ears
or is this just another cycle?

~~~
clumsysmurf
> it seems more and more that the US is "pushing off" things, to what end I
> don't know.

I suspect there are many reasons I'm unaware of, but two things come to mind.

First, the IRS is chronically underfunded because their budget is approved by
Congress, and Congressman get funding / donations / bribes by people that
don't want the IRS going after them for their shenanigans.

Second, there is (understandably) controversial book by Bruce Gibney called "A
Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America"

[https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-
Betraye...](https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-
America-ebook/dp/B01HZFB7GI)

with a recent interview here

[https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16772670/baby-boomers-
millenn...](https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16772670/baby-boomers-millennials-
congress-debt)

"They habitually cut their own taxes and borrow money without any concern for
future burdens."

The general mindset seems to be to kick the can down the road, on all things,
including the environment. This group became the dominant political power in
the mid 90s, and still holds great power.

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srmatto
Besides [https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/) are there any other
agencies, NGO's, or other organizations working on modernizing the government?
And is there a path for private citizens who work in the tech sector to become
more involved?

Seems unfair for the government to have to "compete" with private companies to
offer services using decades old technology. Or in the case of the IRS, it
seems wasteful and inefficient.

~~~
sp332
The IRS is working on modernizing the system. The first attempt was abandoned
in 2009 and the latest project is years behind schedule. This is at least
partly because the budget keeps getting cut. [https://www.nextgov.com/it-
modernization/2018/04/irs-60-year...](https://www.nextgov.com/it-
modernization/2018/04/irs-60-year-old-it-system-failed-tax-day-due-new-
hardware/147598/)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Cutting the budget of the branch _that brings in the money_ might be
strategically unwise...

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Lionsion
The IRS _already nearly developed_ a system to automatically translate their
mainframe assembler logic into Java and check its correctness, but the main
developer was hired on some special kind of program (to bypass the government
salary structure) which could not be renewed before the project was completed.

Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377329)
(The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java)

[https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-
commentary/2018/01/ir...](https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-
commentary/2018/01/irs-clutches-its-modernization-holy-grail/):

> Now, IRS is on the verge of solving this problem. The solution was
> engineered by a group of about eight people. And not under a multi-hundred-
> million-dollar systems integration contract. A leader of the group was Jian
> Wang, a Chinese emigre who is now a naturalized citizen. Wang told me his
> solution isn’t a silver bullet but rather a carefully worked-out
> methodology. It has three components so potentially powerful the IRS has
> filed patent applications for them.

> I say “was” because he’s left the agency, and the status of the project is
> dark.

> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had
> since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which
> it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former
> Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority
> in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s
> Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

> “The last one ran out this past summer,” Koskinen said. The departures
> included Wang. He says he applied to become a GS-15 or Senior Executive
> Service member so he could see through the assembler-to-Java project. But
> his approval didn’t come through until a week before his employment
> authority expired. By then he’d accepted another job. Wang says he had a
> house to pay for, kids to educate. Koskinen confirms the agency wanted to
> convert Wang. But the process of approval from Treasury headquarters and the
> Office of Personnel Management simply took too long.

Note: this is a repost of a comment I made previously at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859012).
This system has come up in the news a lot recently, but the articles are
usually frustratingly vague the effort to replace it, which seems really
interesting. There are so many critical mainframe programs running in business
and government, and it's not an easy job to replace them. For instance, my
employer has been working at it for 20 years.

~~~
goalieca
Somtimes people people spend so much effort trying to save a penny that they
end up spending a dollar. Like we are so worried about people abusing welfare
that we pile on crazy amounts of administration.. ends up costing more.

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gremlinsinc
Maybe the government should pass a guaranteed jobs bill, and offer it also to
out of work/transitioning/freelance devs to rewrite some of their out-dated
systems/code.

It can take 3-10 months to find a job, if you lose a software job, imagine if
the next day you just auto-start working on government projects maybe at a 20%
reduction of your normal salary until you find a real job to replace the one
you lost..

