back to article It's US Tax Day, so of course the IRS's servers have taken a swan dive

US tax returns for 2017 must be filed by midnight tonight – but the nation's Internal Revenue Service is making that difficult. The revenue collection agency's e-file system has been having undisclosed technical difficulties, effectively falling offline and unable to accept tax form submissions. If only someone could have …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    And naturally, the IRS will fine those who coudn't file on time

    That is the way the Tax People work. Everything IS YOUR FAULT and not theirs.

    1. User McUser

      Re: And naturally, the IRS will fine those who coudn't file on time

      Sorry, but if you wait until the last day to file then you kinda deserve it.

      Most people get all their W-2's and similar required paperwork by the end of January so they had at least 8 weeks to get their shit together.

      Or if they couldn't manage that, then they could file IRS Form 4868 which will automatically give them a 6 month extension.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And naturally, the IRS will fine those who coudn't file on time

        The extension is only to file, not to pay. Woe unto you if you owe any money on the 17th and don't send it.

    2. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      Mushroom

      It's Putin's fault

      And his trolls. In order to buy Trump more time to file his tax extension, since he's certainly not going to file his taxes on time.

  2. eswan

    Have they tried turning--

    "the agency is hoping a hard reboot of its systems will resolve the issue"

    Ah, well then. That should sort it out.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "the agency is hoping a hard reboot of its systems will resolve the issue"

      Oh dear. That generally means you don't have a clue. Hope the systems come back up.

      1. kellerr13

        Funny

        It's funny.

        Some people have said over the years that it would be funny if their offices burnt down so they would have no way of knowing who paid and didn't.

        Personally, I think the IRS is using this as a excuse to justify demanding more money. It's how all government agencies expand their power. But I say NO! Sell off some of those billion bullets and use that money to fix things.

        1. Sgt_Oddball
          Trollface

          Re: Funny

          They can't sell the bullets. They lose most of their value once they've been shipped.

          They might as well throw them away.... very quickly. At people who are deemed 'naughty' by the powers that be.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Mushroom

          Re: Funny

          Personally, I think the IRS is using this as a excuse to justify demanding more money.

          That's not just your opinion, man. I heard through the grapevine that their staff (not to mention IT vendors) is full of deadwood.

          I say, make their job easier by purging the bloated tax code. Make it so easy they don't even need computers.

      2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: "the agency is hoping a hard reboot of its systems will resolve the issue"

        "Do you have a backup?" means "I can't fix this."

      3. Mark 85

        Re: "the agency is hoping a hard reboot of its systems will resolve the issue"

        Oh dear. That generally means you don't have a clue. Hope the systems come back up.

        Usually, that is the last resort before the next which is take a large hammer to the server and beat it into a pulp.

  3. Mark 85
    Devil

    COBOL?

    Good plan. Security by obscurity as it saves on having InfoSecurity.

    1. brainbone
      Headmaster

      Re: Security through obscurity.

      I think it's important to point out that ALL information security is through obscurity, be it a physical human guard obscuring your access, legal maneuvering to make use of it impractical, or private encryption keys.

      In the case of encryption, you just hope the obscurity you've chosen to implement is complex enough that unintended decryption of the information is as close to impossible as is possible with current technology.

  4. Nate Amsden

    I'm sure they got encryption

    State of the art export grade 1990s era anyway.

    I'm filing my taxes via USPS priority mail, same way I pretty much always do(one year I used Turbo tax because that year was more complicated than I was comfortable with doing by hand,though still almost got screwed last minute as one of the tax forms from my then company had numbers transposed on it and Turbotax claimed I owned $9,999,999 in taxes, fortunately their support was quick to identify the error in the transposed fields and my tax owed went down to about $2k).

    Though CA state taxes I've done online.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm sure they got encryption

      I also go postal. I use Turbo Tax as the organizer for my efforts, but then print out everything and mail it in. I mean, hey, I've been around this industry too long to trust any one random part of it with my reputation.

      BTW: One year I got an official letter saying "where is it?" Called the IRS and they asked where the form Schedule 'Bong!' was. Turbo Tax said it had it. I had printed out and mailed everything. But somehow that one form that one time didn't print out to get mailed? Don't trust the blinken dinken things! Or rather, "trust, but verify".

    2. joed

      Re: I'm sure they got encryption

      Same here. BTW, "agency's e-file system" is an oxymoron unless it refers to online option open to "free-market" providers. While doing taxes old school is pita, it's the only way to stick it to the middleman that lobbied hard to prevent direct file option. Screw them.

    3. Unicornpiss
      Trollface

      Re: I'm sure they got encryption

      "I'm filing my taxes via USPS priority mail, same way I pretty much always do"

      What if it gets lost in the mail...

  5. chivo243 Silver badge

    59% obsolete

    W2K3?

    LOL

  6. SVV

    COBOL hacking

    "At the conclusion of his questioning, Connolly lightheartedly suggested the silver lining of legacy systems is that the Chinese don't know how to hack COBOL"

    ALTER credit-us-treasury TO PROCEED TO credit-china-treasury

    Hey, the COBOL tutorials are all online you lnow!

    1. sisk

      Re: COBOL hacking

      "At the conclusion of his questioning, Connolly lightheartedly suggested the silver lining of legacy systems is that the Chinese don't know how to hack COBOL"

      So the Chinese don't have any aging programmers looking for a way to pad their wallets a little now that their skills are out of date? I find that hard to believe.

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: COBOL hacking

        When China got electricity / computers / etc for the first time, starting about 25-30 years ago, COBOL was already obsolete, so they probably don't have that many programmers in that situation.

        1. Aladdin Sane

          Re: COBOL hacking

          Anybody intelligent enough in China to learn COBOL would've been shot as an intellectual.

  7. sisk

    Ok, I get that today is the deadline, but I still have to wonder why anyone is filing taxes today. Maybe I'm weird but I've always had the philosophy that you should get your taxes done just as soon as you can. I usually have mine done and a tax return check in hand (not literally of course - this stuff is all done digitally these days) by mid-February. The only time I put off filing my taxes it was because I had to pay in and needed a little extra time to come up with the money, but even then my taxes were done long before mid-April rolled around. I could see maybe putting it off till March if you're still waiting for some paperwork, but why would anyone put off filing their taxes till the last possible day?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      you should get your taxes done just as soon as you can.

      You mention that you get a tax return - that's a good reason to file early and get YOUR money back. Now if you owe money, I can see waiting until it was due. God, I'd like to wait forever. With no penalty.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: you should get your taxes done just as soon as you can.

        I try to set things up so I pay THEM at the end of the year. That way they won't b0rk up the refund and make me wait 2 months to get my money out of them for some bureaucratic B.S. reason. THEN, I e-file some time before the dead line (say a couple of weeks) and have the amount owee auto-deducted from the bank a day or two before "the deadline". Then I check the bank balance online to make sure they didn't b0rk it up. Generally it works without problems, but I have to pay a kind of 'toll' (turbo tax or similar) along the way to make it happen. I think it's still cheaper than a CPA for what I need to do...

        BUT, _I_ have A SOLUTION to all of this! Just *SIMPLIFY* the tax code. Make it a FLAT rate, "you earn this much" "you pay that much" and END OF PROBLEM (something like the Forbes plan would be good, too). You can 'file' on a post card that way. And no more "progressive" (*spit*) tax rates and bizarre deductions! [they only empower politicians anyway]. In fact, make everyone WRITE THE CHECK 4 times a year, as in NO payroll withholding. We'll see how long tax rates remain as-is...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      For some of us the financial institutions play a game. They send the documents out and then, a month later, send out updates. In the 40 pages of fine print you get to play - what's the change?

  8. Dwarf

    If only

    If only we could come up with a way of increasing capacity before or during times when more people may want / need to use the service.

    We could coin an expression - perhaps elasticity.

    It may even be possible to get someone else to provide that compute on demand as you use it, so you don't need to have lots of kit lying around doing nothing for the rest of the year.

    I wonder if they have heard of cloud or AWS ??

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If only

      Now you're speaking like a crazy dwarf. You can't continually extort money from congress if things are working. Assuming you are capable of getting things to work.

      1. Killfalcon Silver badge

        Re: If only

        Don't forget - the Republicans are the party that are convinced Government Doesn't Work, and are more than happy to throw a few wrenches in to make sure.

  9. Cynicalmark
    Facepalm

    Yup

    What usually happens in government these days

    Big idea by management to ‘streamline operations using synergies in blue sky outside the box bollocks’

    Get your IT guys to write a wishlist

    Delete half of the wishlist not realising the list is co-depending and needs all components to work

    Don’t tell IT guys anything so management get the glory for this if it goes right

    Get approval

    Get money

    Find overpriced contractor who knows very little

    Dont tell IT you have done this (very important)

    Review plan from contractor (don’t ask IT as it makes you look stupid)

    Approve plan in a restaurant on paid for vacation (business trip)

    Contractor installs half of the equipment

    Inspect (finally ask IT to do it as you can’t even work your laptop) & realise equipment is dated and doesn’t fulfill the functionality you need

    Call contractor

    Find out contractor had gone bust (run off with money to Caribbean)

    Blame IT guys to your bosses for this as it was their list for the system (after you have retired them with a keep your mouth shut golden handshake)

    Retire on a final salary pension

    Government dept. Press release says ‘work stopped on upgrade as new directions are needed for system’ (public sigh as more funding pissed up the wall by clueless Politicians who still think a screwdriver costs $3000)

    Dont stress too much - the world will still be turning long after we are dust.

  10. Securitymoose
    Childcatcher

    This explains why I've been waiting 3 years for a rebate

    I'm not a US citizen, but the IRS took some tax off me for selling a book in the Land of the Free. To be annoying, I filled in all the forms and eventually they agreed that they would refund the $35. However, they said that this might take some time, but that they would pay interest on the amount owing. I guess, in a century or so, my descendants will be getting an astonishing windfall. It's a pity the money doesn't come directly out of the pockets of the bureaucrats who run the behemoth. We might get a better service then.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Re: This explains why I've been waiting 3 years for a rebate

      In a century? Have you not heard of Milliway's?

  11. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Trollface

    Probably running their main DB on a WIn95 system with Axxess...

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Childcatcher

      Shhh... don't get them started on the possibility of a MICROSOFT "solution" to this!!! [please, NO!]

      Remember, these are ACCOUNTANTS we're dealing with. They're inevitably the ones who got the spear-phishing e-mail that took down every computer on the network. Hand their boss a "solution" with "Microsoft" or "IBM" or "Cisco" or "Oracle" (or even "Google") on it, and they'll be like WHEN DO I SIGN THE CHECK? [and will *BEG* Con-Grab to fund the grossly inflated price tag]

      post-edit: I don't know what took the IRS net down, besides too much demand on it, but a spear-phishing e-mail would be ironic, don't ya think?

  12. Bryan Hall
    FAIL

    FairTax anyone?

    Why don't they just admit it? The US tax code is insane. No rational person would suggest this as a way to collect money to pay for anything. And all those so-called simplifications over the years have only made it worse.

    Time to scrap it and start over. Stop this holding a gun at you for your wallet when you try to get ahead, and do like other sane countries and collect the tax at the register when you buy new durable goods. That's fair to everyone, and keeps tycoons and trust fund people from dodging all the taxes the rest of us have to pay.

  13. Nimby
    Trollface

    Procrasti-Nation

    Why do tomorrow what you can put off 'til next year?

    (Works both for the lazy filers AND for the IRS IT upgrades, apparently.)

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