If the IRS Was Run Like Microsoft
Posted by: <@...>
** The IRS, as always, announces new tax forms will be mailed the week
before the new year. However it will follow Microsoft's example and
actually ship them the following May.
** Responding to pressure from some large corporations and a users'
group, some early copies of the tax forms will actually be released in
March. The recipients must sign non-disclosure agreements.
** In June, the forms will be recalled because the IRS loses a suit for
appropriating some other country's intellectual property.
** When you move, the IRS will continue to send mail to your previous
address forevermore, just like Microsoft sends its product upgrade
notices.
** When you upgrade from form 1040 EZ to 1040 A, and then to 1040, you
will pay an upgrade fee each time. Also you need to send in a new
registration card and get a new Social Security Number. In order to
upgrade, you have to submit the original first page of your previous
year's form.
** Like Microsoft, when you file a late or amended tax return the IRS
will reject it on the grounds that the the prior year is no longer
supported.
** The IRS telephone help will remain similar to Microsoft's, staffed by
ill-trained, high-turnover personnel who sometimes give a correct
answer, but the IRS will have to discontinue using a toll-free phone
number.
** After struggling with reams of dense documentation of complex options
and rules, you discover that you will need publication 3297, with a
ten-word-long title, in order to answer (you hope) a single obscure
question. The IRS, like Microsoft, will charge a minimum of $40 for that
publication.
** The IRS, like Microsoft, will continue to issue immense volumes of
bug fixes, interpretations, and clarifications. However the tax-rule
updates should be neither easily searchable nor well-indexed.
** Instead of three-ring binders containing complete sets of tax code
bugs and interpretations, IRS rulings will be promulgated in a haphazard
fashion by individual taxpayers via BBS, Usenet, and Compuserve. A
for-profit publishing subsidiary would also be nice.
** The new all-powerful (and eccentric) Commissioner of Internal
Revenue will jet around the country giving speeches and granting
numerous interviews, but only to sycophantic reporters. Changes to the
tax code will be at the whim of the Commissioner and largely kept
secret until they are published.