If you were an IT guy, and you repeatedly tried and failed to fix your company's computer system, you'd probably be fired, and deservedly so.
The Internal Revenue Service, meanwhile, has been trying and failing to do that since (checks calendar) literally the early 1980s. And call us cynical but we strongly doubt that anyone over there has faced much in the way of professional consequences.
For 40 years the IRS has tried and failed to update its main computer system. Regardless of funding level and regardless of who controls the White House and Congress, the bureaucracy is simply unable to pull it off. The IRS and progressive Democrats continue to plead poverty and pretend the failure is due to insufficient funding rather than incompetence.
That's no lie. Let's take an abridged trip down memory lane to see how the IRS has handled its in-house tech network:
1982:
[T]he I.R.S. is struggling with a data processing system that is, by its own admission, ‘grossly short of the capacity and modern state-of-the-art efficiency that is essential for an effective tax system in the 1980's.'
Its computer data facilities, parts of which are as many as 17 years old, must be replaced. The agency plans to put into effect a modernization program by 1985, replacing computers in its local service centers, buying a computerized microfilm research system and replacing outmoded hardware at the service's National Computer Center.
‘Without this,' Mr. Egger said, ‘we face the prospect of breakdowns which will make the service unresponsive to taxpayers and our own internal needs.'"
Wait wait wait...the IRS? "Unresponsive to taxpayers?" Seriously??
1985:
The I.R.S. said the processing of 1.5 million individual returns had been delayed because of problems registering them with its master computer file in Martinsburg, W.Va.
As a result, a large number of taxpayers – possibly several hundred thousand – may not receive their refunds until after the June 1 deadline that the Government is racing to meet. From that date, taxpayers who filed their returns on time are entitled to 13 percent annual interest on their refunds, at a potential cost to the Government of millions of dollars.
Now hold on a second: You're telling me that these idiotic computer glitches might earn me a whopping big fat 13% return and cost the U.S. federal government "millions of dollars?"
The Internal Revenue Service conceded today that it had spent $4 billion developing modern computer systems that a top official said ‘do not work in the real world' and proposed contracting out the processing of paper tax returns filed by individuals. That would allow non-Government workers to see confidential information about the incomes of individual Americans.
This is almost beyond parody: The government sunk four billion dollars into its own computer network, failed to produce a workable system, and then considered farming out the nation's Social Security numbers to a bunch of random contractors.
2003:
"After five years, a project to replace the Internal Revenue Service's aging file-keeping computer system with modern technology is so far behind schedule that the I.R.S. has told the prime contractor that unless it improves its performance by the end of the month, the government may have no choice but to fire it.
The project, which was expected to cost $8 billion when completed, has spent less than $1 billion so far, but it is already 40 percent over budget for what it has done, according to the I.R.S. Oversight Board, an independent watchdog body that Congress created in 1998.
I got nothing here but this:
Can't wait to see what the next 40 years brings!
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