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Things are stupid all over
Jan. 29th, 2009 06:46 pmI work with a lot of state taxing agencies. Let me tell you, it may be rough in corporate land, but it's been rough for a few years in state governments. They've been hacking at budgets for 3-5 years now, and it's gotten to the point where almost everyone with any experience has left.
This week we've had four major state-side meltdowns. Probably the worst was in New York, where it got so bad that on Monday morning (and again last night) the IRS cut them off; basically removed their ID from the system and started bouncing returns sent for them. And they have a due date tomorrow for LLC returns. I suspended transmissions until they got things sorted out to keep things from getting worse, but I still had to locate and retransmit hundreds of returns that got bogus errors before I moved on it.
These are the tip of the iceberg. There's stupidity galore all over state filing land. Mostly it isn't meltdowns, it's just stupid decisions, insane wait times to get hold of anyone that knows anything, outsourcing to equally clueless contractors who only know one tool (which is, therefore, the perfect solution for YOUR particular problem, no matter what it is (everything looks like a nail)), handing XML conversion projects to people along with a copy of "XML for Dummies", etc.
This is in the middle of legislatures that are pushing tax law changes like crazy when the DORs have no funds for programmers, and beancounters that are pushing for more systems and bizarre forms to move to electronic filing and instituting mandates to cut overhead (electronic filing is MUCH cheaper for the states than paper filing), again, without the funds to hire programmers.
None of this is new, but it seems to be coming to a head. At least, I hope it is. It's also possible that it's going to get even worse.
The entire industry is terrified of the conversion of the 1040 system to XML. The IRS has pushed it off for several years now, and it looks like it's off to at least 2012 now (it was originally set for this year, or even earlier). If it were just the IRS, it'd be fine. The problem is, the IRS and the states are tightly tied, and nobody believes that many of the states have anything like the expertise to pull it off. Plus, they refuse to talk to one another in any real way.
Thing is, the entire industry runs on the mistakes of others. Professional accounting software is a closed market, a zero-sum game. There are only X professional accountants in the US, they all have software already. You gain market share when some other company screws up enough to piss off users enough to change. 1040 XML conversion has the potential to be the biggest, most public cock-up anyone's ever seen, and nobody wants to get caught under those wheels, so the IRS has 1000 heels dragging them back. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing, really.
This week we've had four major state-side meltdowns. Probably the worst was in New York, where it got so bad that on Monday morning (and again last night) the IRS cut them off; basically removed their ID from the system and started bouncing returns sent for them. And they have a due date tomorrow for LLC returns. I suspended transmissions until they got things sorted out to keep things from getting worse, but I still had to locate and retransmit hundreds of returns that got bogus errors before I moved on it.
These are the tip of the iceberg. There's stupidity galore all over state filing land. Mostly it isn't meltdowns, it's just stupid decisions, insane wait times to get hold of anyone that knows anything, outsourcing to equally clueless contractors who only know one tool (which is, therefore, the perfect solution for YOUR particular problem, no matter what it is (everything looks like a nail)), handing XML conversion projects to people along with a copy of "XML for Dummies", etc.
This is in the middle of legislatures that are pushing tax law changes like crazy when the DORs have no funds for programmers, and beancounters that are pushing for more systems and bizarre forms to move to electronic filing and instituting mandates to cut overhead (electronic filing is MUCH cheaper for the states than paper filing), again, without the funds to hire programmers.
None of this is new, but it seems to be coming to a head. At least, I hope it is. It's also possible that it's going to get even worse.
The entire industry is terrified of the conversion of the 1040 system to XML. The IRS has pushed it off for several years now, and it looks like it's off to at least 2012 now (it was originally set for this year, or even earlier). If it were just the IRS, it'd be fine. The problem is, the IRS and the states are tightly tied, and nobody believes that many of the states have anything like the expertise to pull it off. Plus, they refuse to talk to one another in any real way.
Thing is, the entire industry runs on the mistakes of others. Professional accounting software is a closed market, a zero-sum game. There are only X professional accountants in the US, they all have software already. You gain market share when some other company screws up enough to piss off users enough to change. 1040 XML conversion has the potential to be the biggest, most public cock-up anyone's ever seen, and nobody wants to get caught under those wheels, so the IRS has 1000 heels dragging them back. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing, really.
