I've been doing this for about 40 yrs, I'm not going to try to find the magic 'keywords' to bring up old news from 10, 20 or more years. The IRS has, from time-to-time, initiated large programs spending hundreds of millions and more that were ultimately just abandoned with no results. That's complete failure. (I rather suspect that it wasn't IRS personnel attempting the task, but more likely private vendors. I don't think the IRS would have the in-house talent to do the job. They are an administrator of our tax regimes, not first and foremost code monkeys.)
Again, contrary to Werepossum's dissembling, I'm not saying the IRS never has failed IT projects. Clearly it does. My point is that failed IT projects are common across the industry, and that a few anecdotes about failed projects tells us little about the overall competence of the IRS, or any other organization. We need complete data for that, a view of all IT projects, successes and failures, so we can determine their failure
rate and compare it to their peers.
You won't find that data in news articles or GOP talking points. You'll find it in a study. Do you have such a study? If not, you have no basis for calling the IRS incompetent. You don't know if their failure
rate is unusually high or not. You're making accusations out of bias rather than knowledge, repeating GOP dogma as if it is fact.
I also assume most big IRS projects are heavily outsourced. I saw a lot of references to third parties in the articles I read about IRS projects. That's also pretty standard for every company I've worked with. (Of course, in many of those cases I was an outside consultant, so I suppose I don't necessarily have good visibility into companies that do all projects in house.)
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I don't see the complaint here. Maybe you can explain.
The IRS was supposed to provide free tax return prep & filing software for people to use. So, they made agreements with private firms to have their filing software available for free, right?
If it's free, who cares whether the software was made by the IRS or, say, Turbo Tax?
This, for a change, seems a damn good idea by the US govt: The IRS got people free tax filing software to use yet incurred zero costs in doing so. The companies like Turbo Tax paid for its development. Didn't this save we taxpayers money? Why should the IRS spend money to 'recreate the wheel'?
As for downloading taxpayer data (the 3rd party reporting of income and deductions), by law everyone already gets this data directly from the 3rd party. Why must it also be available for downloading? That is redundant.
I can see how some would prefer it all in one download, but given data security on the internet, such as it is, is this really a good idea?
If the data is going to made available from the IRS, should we reverse the mandate on 3rd parties requiring them to provide it directly to us? It is hugely expensive to have all these companies prepare and individually mail to each of us our info on dividends, wages, interest etc.
Fern
Those are probably questions best answered by Warren herself, but I can give you my take on it.
Re. the complaint with the current third-party arrangement, I think there are two issues. First, these companies do not already have your W-2 and 1099 data. This means each taxpayer must provide it while preparing their returns.
Second, Warren wants an option for a prepopulated tax return. The IRS already has most of the information needed to complete simple tax returns. They know our personal information, they have W-2s 1099s, etc. Warren would like the IRS to prepare a basic return in advance, ready for signature if there are no changes or special circumstances. Private preparers cannot do that because they don't have all the information necessary.
Re. contracting with third-party companies for on-line returns, I agree it was a smart approach, at least in a business sense. The question is whether that's the right approach from a public service perspective. We traded profits and third party access to sensitive information for lower taxpayer costs. I see both sides of it and don't really have a strong opinion.
Re. downloading our W-2 and 1099 data from the IRS, I see that as a simple matter of saving time and improving accuracy. It's a service government could offer to make taxpayers' lives a bit better. Today, that's only available if your employer uses a payroll service that offers downloads.
