
WTF Delaware? - jliptzin
http://joshliptzin.svbtle.com/wtf-delaware
======
deathanatos
There appears to be a giant <div> on top of the entire website. It's the first
non-comment child of <body>:

    
    
      <div id="forceDOMredraw"></div>
    

With the CSS of:

    
    
      height: 3000px
      width: 3000px
      position: absolute
      top: 0px
      z-index: 50000
    

I do love arbitrary constants.

Killing it makes the site responsive. No idea what it's there for. I'm
guessing that it should be moved by JS, but the JS is failing. There's a lot
of these:

    
    
      Uncaught TypeError: Property '$' of object [object Object] is not a function 
    

Looks like jQuery isn't getting loaded, but that's probably because of:

    
    
       [blocked] The page at 'https://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml' was loaded over HTTPS, but ran insecure content from 'http://www.delaware.gov/CLF2012/js/jquery-1.5.1.min.js': this content should also be loaded over HTTPS.
    

So, yeah, no jQuery, no script, defunct page. The problems seem to be rooted
in the fact that jQuery didn't load due to it being sent over HTTP, and not
HTTPS; indeed, loading the page on HTTP causes things to appear to work.

Just don't use any security, and everything will work just fine. :-) This
problem seems to cover the entirety of corp.delaware.gov, too.

Also, the 404's the article mentions,

    
    
      GET https://corp.delaware.gov/undefined?1394573701086 404 (Not Found)
    

I doubt that the URL is supposed to have "undefined", but rather that JS has
stabbed yet another dev in the back.

~~~
peterjmag
He's been building web apps professionally for over 10 years, and he didn't
think to right click somewhere (anywhere) and "Inspect Element"? That's the
first thing I did on that page.

EDIT: That came off a bit more snarky (snarkier?) than I meant. To the OP: If
you inspect the element, you can then delete it with the backspace/delete key
to get to the link that you need, which ultimately leads to a separate
subdomain that doesn't seem to exhibit this problem:
[https://delecorp.delaware.gov/eCorp/LoginAnnualReportsCLF](https://delecorp.delaware.gov/eCorp/LoginAnnualReportsCLF)

Don't be too quick to write the site off as "utterly dysfunctional". Any one
of us could have made a similar mistake, and once you get past that glaring
bug (which only appears on pages served over SSL), it's not bad for a state
government site.

Perhaps you or someone else could get in touch with them to explain the issue?
[http://corp.delaware.gov/contact.shtml](http://corp.delaware.gov/contact.shtml)

~~~
LeonidasXIV
> He's been building web apps professionally for over 10 years, and he didn't
> think to right click somewhere (anywhere) and "Inspect Element"? That's the
> first thing I did on that page.

That's odd too, it was basically my first thought to inspect the element which
used this pointless div and then tried deleting it. Total time spent: 15
seconds, less than reading this rant.

(This is actually a habit I formed by getting rid of huge overlay ads that
cover the page or try to force me to log in. No sir, I'll just have this node
removed, thank you very much)

~~~
mcv
I do the same thing. I wouldn't mind a plugin that automatically recognized
crippling overlays and deletes them for me.

------
abruzzi
There are sometimes reasons for odd stuff like this. We take our tax payment
system offline for a short period every day for several reasons. First, the
actual system that stores the data is on ancient system where the database
needs to be shut down to do backups. Most the system was written in the early
90's, and we hope to replace it soon, but it is easier said than done. (We
tried once, and lost close to $1m when the vendor folded 2 years into the
migration) The second reason is if you begin your transaction at 11:55 the
system calculates your amount owed based on the day the transactions begins,
but if the transaction doesn't complete until 12:01 then (in the case of late
payments) the amount paid is inaccurate with regard to penalty and interest.
Technically we're not allowed to take partial payments, so we have to do some
silly things to ensure that we follow the law (we would have more control if
we processed credit cards internally, but that is done by a payment
processor.) So while I know nothing about Delaware, I can sympathize with
building systems like this inside of government rules.

------
incision
_> "Our government has likely forked over millions of our tax dollars (how
much did Obamacare cost?) to private contractors in exchange for a site so
utterly dysfunctional that it can’t even serve its purpose of collecting those
very tax dollars!"_

Oh wow, a "My tax dollars!" complaint in the middle of a "My tax dodge is
inconvenient!" complaint with a little "Thanks, Obama!" thrown in for good
measure.

~~~
batoure
>"Oh wow, a "My tax dollars!" complaint in the middle of a "My tax dodge is
inconvenient!" complaint with a little "Thanks, Obama!" thrown in for good
measure."

Delawares taxes are competitive but not actually the lowest. The following is
a succinct explanation from a 3 second Google search on the issue.

"There are two major reasons for Delaware's dominance of the corporate
incorporation business. One reason is the bi-partisan political consensus in
Delaware to keep the Delaware corporation statute modern and up-to-date, and
to rely on Delaware's corporate law specialists for advice in how to do this.
As a result, law students at every law school in the United States study the
Delaware corporation statute and the decisions of Delaware courts interpreting
that law."

"The other major reason corporations choose to incorporate in Delaware is the
quality of Delaware courts and judges. Delaware has a special court, the Court
of Chancery, to rule on corporate law disputes without juries. Corporate cases
do not get stuck on dockets behind the multitude of non-corporate cases.
Instead, Delaware corporations can expect their legal disputes to be addressed
promptly and expertly by judges who specialize in corporate law."

[http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/brandywine-to-
broad...](http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/brandywine-to-
broad/18206-why-do-so-many-corporations-choose-to-incorporate-in-delaware)

~~~
tzs
A third major reason is fashion. People want to incorporate, and they look and
see a bunch of major corporations are incorporated in Delaware even though
they don't have any serious business connection with Delaware other than being
incorporated there, and so they think it is a good idea for them to
incorporate their small local business in far off Delaware just like the giant
public companies do. (Or rather, usually do...Microsoft reincorporated back to
Washington after a few years in Delaware).

~~~
tptacek
A fourth reason is that incorporation in your home state can be complicated;
for instance, in NY, it (IIRC) involves running newspaper ads. If you're not
going to incorporate in your home state, Delaware is a sane default choice.

A fifth reason is that it's extremely easy to incorporate in Delaware; it's
the Internet's default choice, too.

------
chimeracoder
> “This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter
> Time.”

I really hope the "Easter [sic] Time" is from the original site, not a typo in
the blog.

The only other business I've seen do this is B&H[0], which refuses to accept
_online_ orders during the Sabbath, as well as during several other Jewish
holidays (such as the first and last days of Passover).

The only other business I've seen do this was my previous landlord[1]. They
used to let me pay my rent online. However, their system only let you pay
during "standard business hours", completely negating (for me) the convenience
of an online payment - I like to take care of my bills after-hours at home,
not at work, thank you very much.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26H](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26H)

[1] Unlike B&H, the management company was not run by Hasidim.

~~~
burntsushi
I'm a grad student at Tufts, and our online course registration app does this
(called "SIS"). You can only register for classes during some time period: 8am
to 6pm, I think. It's crazy.

Tufts recently hired a huge team to "fix" SIS. It's now called iSIS and you
can tell it's still using SIS underneath. (The HTML markup returned is the
exact same as before, but it's dressed up a little nicer.)

Nuts.

~~~
Fomite
_God_ I hated this when I was at Tufts. But its far from the only university
system to do this. I suspect a middleware vendor somewhere.

~~~
burntsushi
Oh, most definitely.

I was at Worcester State before Tufts, and part of their registration had to
be done via paper (in person at the registrar). It was almost as convenient as
these online systems... (Assuming I was on campus anyway.)

------
sheetjs
The IRS EIN Application also has "hours":

[http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-
Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-
Employed/Apply-for-an-Employer-Identification-Number-\(EIN\)-Online)

> Our new hours of operation [for the application] are Monday through Friday
> 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern time.

~~~
jliptzin
Is there a good reason to do this? I'm actually curious

~~~
ChuckMcM
In Nevada (where I pay my corporate taxes) it was claimed that hours
restrictions were mandated by law ("No part of the office can be open outside
of the following hours" kind of thing) I have yet to find the statute though
that says that. I agree it is a very weird thing.

------
snoldak924
If you open it in IE, it asks to display insecure content. If you click yes,
the site works. (You can click buttons).

They must have linked a .js that wasn't on a https.

~~~
phaer
So they just forgot their "Optimized for Internet Explorer" badge.

------
cschneid
My only guess is a batch job that really really doesn't want data changing out
from under it (and the devs were too lazy to batch up the next days changes to
be submitted post-job).

~~~
protomyth
I think you have it. 11:45PM sounds suspiciously like the batch job kicks off
at midnight and should be done by opening of business the next day. I figure
if it looks like it will go over 8AM then they have to kill it because the
office staff is going to change data regardless of what IT wants.

~~~
toomuchtodo
2014: I can take credit cards for my startup in 10 minutes with Stripe, but
Delaware needs 8+ hours to run a batch job to collect taxes.

W. T. F.

~~~
protomyth
There is no money to "fix" and IT system that "works". Think of the children
you'll be taking money from to pay for this non-essential work.

Why yes, I have been in THAT meeting, just not in Delaware.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Shit like this makes my blood boil.

~~~
protomyth
The true blood boiler is when the system finally collapses and IT gets hit
with the "why didn't you fix this before it collapsed"-lecture from the same
folks who wouldn't give you the budget to fix it in the first place.

This is generally followed by the hiring of some consulting firm to propose
the solution you wanted budget for at a fair multiple of the original budget.
They, after all, are consultants and you are a peon.

------
sergiotapia
As a web developer I'm kind of impressed how broken it is. It takes
significantly more effort to break something to this magnitude.

I mean, you have to go out of your way to break things this badly. If you just
play normally, your website cannot and WILL NOT crash and burn like this.

I attribute it to malice, I just don't see it happening this badly without
intent.

------
inheritancejon
A 3000x3000 div with a z-index of 50000 just sits on top of everything. Delete
that node and the page reacts normally at least.

------
_nato_
``This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter
Time''

Easter is on the 20th of April this year. You will miss the boat completely!

------
endymi0n
Welcome to the wonderful world of government websites - (un)fortunately you're
not alone... I've had almost exactly the same experience with the German
e-government "solutions" last year:
[http://distributed.hamann.se/blog/2013/08/31/the-
horrifying-...](http://distributed.hamann.se/blog/2013/08/31/the-horrifying-
state-of-egovernment-in-germany/)

------
drawkbox
Most of these were paid for long ago in the age of Internet Explorer, I bet it
works fine in that. Hopefully gov't contracts now focus on open technologies
and have to support more browsers now but all of them are broken.

I use AZ and Nevada, Nevada was horrid but got a little better, still on par
with insurance sites or offshored services. These types of systems would never
survive if they didn't collude a useful or required service behind them.

The worst services I have to deal with are paying my state taxes (EFTPS for
federal isn't too bad) and insurance websites for healthcare. The
healthcare.gov site, even though it launched bad, actually looks good and has
some usability, relative to the insurance/tax/govt sites of the same caliber.

------
aghy
Seems like their website wasn't suppose to be served over a secure connection,
just use
[http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml](http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml)
and all is fine.

~~~
incompatible
Just as long as there's nothing in your financial information that you
consider confidential.

~~~
incompatible
Although when supplying information to an organisation which has such as poor
approach to running its computer systems, you may as well assume you are
making it public anyway.

------
runamok
Pretty sure the root cause is the blend of http/https sources. Chrome and
perhaps other browsers helpfully block the http content some of which is
probably needed for the webpage to function.

In Chrome you click the shield icon next to the bookmarks star in the address
bar. I believe the page will then reload showing the http content which will
usually fix the issue.

I say "helpful" un-ironically above because the http content can compromise
whatever is on the page.

The OP is of course right that the developer of this page is dangerously
incompetent.

------
arikrak
> “This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter[n]
> Time.”

We're not used to sites like Amazon being shut down during nighttime hours,
but I've come across it before for government sites. For example, when I filed
a corporation with the IRS, after I answered a few pages, the site said I
should come back during work hours. They probably have a person at the other
end who handles the forms...

------
RaphiePS
Easy to fix on Chrome. Just click on the little shield at the top-right of the
omnibar and click "load unsafe script."

Yes, it's broken and they should have caught it, but it's so hyperbolic to
call it an "utterly dysfunctional site." This isn't a screwup like
healthcare.gov, which had major architecture problems.

This is literally just the omission of the "s" in https.

------
jpmattia
Is this the franchise tax that depends on the assets of the company? The one
where the registered agents routinely send estimated payments invoices with
assumptions far in excess of the actual taxes?

Excuse my tinfoil hattery, but I have to wonder whether the accuracy of
payments has something to do with the lack of website usability.

~~~
sureshv
There are two ways to calculate your Delaware taxes (assuming registered as a
C-Corp) - the authorized shares method and the assumed par value method. The
online annual filing form makes this quite easy to calculate. Unless you are
generating huge revenue then par value is the way to go.

------
reid
Those pages lead you here, which works:
[https://delecorp.delaware.gov/eCorp/LoginAnnualReportsCLF](https://delecorp.delaware.gov/eCorp/LoginAnnualReportsCLF)

Their problem is the div#forceDOMredraw which appears over everything. Good
times. Remove that node and the page works again.

------
rohi81
They don't allow late march filing on the site, some genius thought that
instead of showing a pop-up or error message he just freezes the page. Same
behavior noticed when we tried filing during off hours.

------
larrys
Here is a working link to pay taxes which I believe also includes franchise
taxes:

[http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml](http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml)

------
rd108
Just got bit by Delaware's corporate name-check service. It only runs during
EST business hours. I just want to query a database to see if a name is
already taken, thank you..

------
sfeng
Incidentally, you could just do:

    
    
        * {
          pointer-events: none !important;
        }
    

If you did want to make a site work like this.

------
koliber
I had to resort to IE to get my franchise tax paid--during their business
hours, of course.

------
will_brown
www.AmeriStartup.com can take care of your Delaware corporate compliance for
you if your having issues (Annual Report, Franchise Taxes,Delaware Business
License, and Registered Agent Service).

------
kbar13
it's the same way at the Rutgers web registration software. It's actually a
pretty nicely done web app, but it is "unavailable" at night.

------
3rd3
Thanks, this crashed my browser!

------
dcre
It works in IE. :(

------
elwell
Easter Time?

------
happyscrappy
I can't pay my "greatly reduced taxes because I am a Delaware corp" in two
seconds! Imagine if you had real problems.

~~~
justizin
Right, I found this amusing:

"I hope by now you’ve seen the irony here. Our government has likely forked
over millions of our tax dollars (how much did Obamacare cost?) to private
contractors in exchange for a site so utterly dysfunctional that it can’t even
serve its purpose of collecting those very tax dollars! That’s how broken our
system is."

Our system is so broken that most new corporations are formed in a company
with _no_ space available for your business or for you to live, only a person
who sits and answers a phone for a few thousand or hundred thousand companies
to prove an 'office location' or whatever wording.

Delaware doesn't care because they get some taxes, what you'd really call a
payoff for being a tax protector.

There were pretty heinous problems with the situation at hand before OP opened
his web browser.

~~~
Frozenlock
And what are those problems?

That I can choose at which 'location' I incorporate for something that is
immaterial?

