9 ms·

Having trouble with the IRS site? Try all caps

118 points by quickthrower2 7y ago

27182818284 7y ago
For what it is worth, errors are being hammered out. The first few times I received "unspecified error" then tried it again one day and it worked like a charm.
- theferalrobot 7y ago
  Same, frankly given so little heads up I'm amazed things have gone as smoothly as they have
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/oP5AW https://archive.md/oP5AW
- kull 7y ago
  Thank you! The current Internet is not usable, all those paywalls. I miss 2000s.
  - 3xblah 7y ago
    Having trouble with the LA Times site? Try without Javascript curl https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-04-27/irs-website-hack-coronavirus-stimulus-checks-all-caps?_amp=true|sed -n 's/.*<title>/<title>/;/footersubscribe/d;/<h1/,/<\/h1>/p;/<title>/p;/<blockquote/p;/<p>/p' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
  - driverdan 7y ago
    I didn't have any trouble viewing it with uBlock Origin.
- gh123man 7y ago
  Learned this from another HN comment, but put a `.` after the `.com` so it looks like this `website.com./page` and it will get you around the paywall.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  "Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to archive.md. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details."
thrill 7y ago
I just tried this and, well, it worked for me (TM) - it had not worked previously.
nerdbaggy 7y ago
Fun Fact: USPS prefers that the address is written in all caps. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm So I bet there is some internal API that searches or something for an address with all caps.
- dpau 7y ago
  I tried to change my address today on https://moversguide.usps.com https://moversguide.usps.com In the address form, there is a field for PO Box. It is labeled "PO Box". One would assume you should type your PO Box number in this field, e.g. "1234". That is incorrect. You must enter the entire string "PO Box 1234". In a field that is already labeled "PO Box"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I think that field can be used for other box purposes. "PO Boxes" are exclusively offered by the USPS, but there are private providers that provide a "PMB" mailbox, which depending on the situation may just a number. I think military post office may use that field as well. It's been a long time since I've had to look at it, but there is a Postal Addressing Standards document that covers all of the various use cases. It actually gets pretty interesting when you need to get a letter delivered to a customer mailbox at a UPS store in an area with rural mail delivery.
- capableweb 7y ago
  > So I bet there is some internal API that searches or something for an address with all caps. Rather than something searching with all caps, isn't it more likely that the query/search is case-sensitive, and the data just happens to be stored/retrieved with all caps?
- room500 7y ago
  For USPS, they need to use OCR to read the address off the mail. In general, uppercase is more legible and avoids some issues (lowercase L vs uppercase I) Lowercase is acceptable, but it must meet their guidelines for OCR readability. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_002.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_002.htm
revx 7y ago
I got mine by typing my address in all lowercase, so ymmv :)
danso 7y ago
So this worked for me, but I hadn't tried since a couple weeks ago (maybe the all-caps thing was fixed by yesterday?). What's funny is that the subsequent step (verifying tax info) had a couple of other old-school slightly bad practices: - Blocking copy-paste of my bank account information - Input value for income can't contain commas or a dollar sign - Obscuring input field of SSN as if it were a password (I suppose this might not seem wrong to some folks, but technically SSN isn't a password and most other sites I've used don't treat it like a password)
- robomartin 7y ago
  An old college friend of mine from 30+ years ago used to write his SSN on every college book he bought. He also used an engraver to etch his SSN into every tool he owned. The SSN was't all that important back then. I can't say when it became something of potential value. Sadly he passes many years ago. His wife called me in desperation. She needed to get rid of and donate a bunch of tools and hardware filling their garage. However, everything had his SSN on it, I mean, he had an amazing collection of Snap-on tools with his SSN engraved on everything, down to the screwdrivers. She trust me implicitly. We took everything out of their garage and donated it to our local high school's robotics club. The caveat was: The kids had to help me grind off the SSN from every single tool they got. That was an interesting week.
  - nhumrich 7y ago
    > cant say when it became something of value As soon as banks started allowing SSNs themselves instead of requiring an SSN card for establishing lines of credit.
  - contravariant 7y ago
    Maybe this is a silly question, but exactly what was the risk? If knowing a random SSN is problematic then it's not exactly hard to just generate a couple yourself.
    - gt_grc 7y ago
singlow 7y ago
Been checking everyday without success. I haven't gotten a refund in several years, so I knew from the FAQ they would not have direct deposit info, even though they pulled the money I owed out using the same bank info. Tried all uppercase for my street address and it worked.
jupiter90000 7y ago
I was trying almost every day including yesterday, did this and it worked. If it is required to be all caps it'd be nice if the site said so... I guess maybe they just finally loaded my data.
bni 7y ago
This is not so surprising for someone that has worked a lot with legacy systems. Deep down somewhere there is a LIKE 'EML STREET%'. Making it case insensitive will kill the performance because the index cant be used.
- talliedthoughts 7y ago
  Right, but the system could convert the value to all caps after you enter it, no?
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    The contractors who designed this would need more time and money to add that feature. Probably 4 weeks, 100K.
    - netsharc 7y ago
      I was about to say. It could almost be a 2-liner Javascript (gasp!), 1 to import jQuery (more gasps!) and 1 to run all inputs through toUpperCase()... The bill will be 95K, thanks!
      - capableweb 7y ago
        To be fair, the 95K (imaginary, I know, but let's just roll with that) is not for paying you to write those four lines, but rather to pay you for your investment in knowing that you only have to write those four lines. Same as the restaurant bill is not equal+margin to what they spend on food, it's also everything else like rent, salaries + margin.
        mschuster91 7y ago
        Or rather, the 95K also includes the formal verification testing for the boatload of downstream systems that get the data. That is usually what makes cost in government projects explode as they are an utterly wild mix-and-match of code and hardware that is from the earliest era of mainframes 60 years ago to stuff that has been made in the last half year. Alone testing for encoding issues can take weeks... because most testing has to be done and verified manually.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
COBOL like caps?
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Yeah that was my initial reaction as well - seems like a clue that everything gets devolved to a COBOL backend. It really wouldn't surprise me.
ncmncm 7y ago
Also abbreviate address terms: RD, LN, ST, not Road, Lane, Street.
- sp332 7y ago
  Yes but also try with periods after all abbreviations. Ave. St. Ln. Ct. Apt. https://twitter.com/eruditechick/status/1253703820430827521 https://twitter.com/eruditechick/status/1253703820430827521
achairapart 7y ago
This may be the reason why every accountant I know live and breathe in perpetually CAPS LOCK ON mode.
mercora 7y ago
could this be because it bypasses a cached response? does it work if one just changes capitalization of any character? (i have no deal with the IRS so cant test myself)
ohyeahlaws 7y ago
I tried a 100 times but then used the shortened version of north and drive (ie N and Dr). And it worked. Shame on me for using the address spelled out on a letter from the IRS.
paypalcust83 7y ago
Fun fact: The IRS Economic Impact Payment (EIP) site for non-filers is run by Intuit. [0] You gotta love those who lobby against simplifying tax processes and harvest data on behalf of the IRS. And, I'm absolutely convinced Intuit will treat that sensitive data with the utmost respect and would never, ever resell a list of people who haven't filed taxes in a couple of years in order to discriminate against them in loan applications, leases, and purchases. 0. https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/static/privacy_statement.html https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/static/privacy_stateme...
Pxtl 7y ago
I accept that I have a number of beliefs that are considered heretical to other programmers. = Should be for testing equality, not assignment. Null should equal null in SQL. Whitespace is a bad delimiter. But my most heretical belief is that the only thing that should be case-sensitive is passwords. Any system that is case-sensitive by default will eventually break your heart about it in the stupidest possible way.
- tobyhinloopen 7y ago
  Everything should be case sensitive, except things that shouldn’t. Case-insensitivity by default everywhere will be a pain.
- MrLeap 7y ago
  I agree (with pedantic caveats not worth mentioning) with everything you've listed, unless you're using the regex view of what whitespace is and think the \t character is a bad delimiter, well then, that's where I draw the line.
gexla 7y ago
The payment status not available message was (still is? I don't need to check it anymore) a general error message. Also noticed the page is running Google Analytics. Might that be a privacy issue?
teilo 7y ago
The sovereign citizen types are going to make hay with this one.
qppo 7y ago
What bothers me is that they provide a single line to enter your information instead of the same form they have on your tax return. For probably good reasons they won't tell you if your input information is valid, if you intentionally put in a bad address it will tell you "payment status unavailable." It's annoying because I don't know if my issues are because of my tax status or my input information. A form would help with that. Particularly because my street has ambiguous naming and I don't know if it's what the street sign says, what the USPS prefers, or what is written on my tax return.

118 points by quickthrower2 7y ago

For what it is worth, errors are being hammered out. The first few times I received "unspecified error" then tried it again one day and it worked like a charm.

theferalrobot 7y ago
Same, frankly given so little heads up I'm amazed things have gone as smoothly as they have

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/oP5AW https://archive.md/oP5AW

kull 7y ago
Thank you! The current Internet is not usable, all those paywalls. I miss 2000s.
- 3xblah 7y ago
  Having trouble with the LA Times site? Try without Javascript curl https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-04-27/irs-website-hack-coronavirus-stimulus-checks-all-caps?_amp=true|sed -n 's/.*<title>/<title>/;/footersubscribe/d;/<h1/,/<\/h1>/p;/<title>/p;/<blockquote/p;/<p>/p' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- driverdan 7y ago
  I didn't have any trouble viewing it with uBlock Origin.
gh123man 7y ago
Learned this from another HN comment, but put a `.` after the `.com` so it looks like this `website.com./page` and it will get you around the paywall.
quickthrower2 7y ago
"Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to archive.md. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details."

thrill 7y ago

I just tried this and, well, it worked for me (TM) - it had not worked previously.

nerdbaggy 7y ago

Fun Fact: USPS prefers that the address is written in all caps. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm So I bet there is some internal API that searches or something for an address with all caps.

dpau 7y ago
I tried to change my address today on https://moversguide.usps.com https://moversguide.usps.com In the address form, there is a field for PO Box. It is labeled "PO Box". One would assume you should type your PO Box number in this field, e.g. "1234". That is incorrect. You must enter the entire string "PO Box 1234". In a field that is already labeled "PO Box"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I think that field can be used for other box purposes. "PO Boxes" are exclusively offered by the USPS, but there are private providers that provide a "PMB" mailbox, which depending on the situation may just a number. I think military post office may use that field as well. It's been a long time since I've had to look at it, but there is a Postal Addressing Standards document that covers all of the various use cases. It actually gets pretty interesting when you need to get a letter delivered to a customer mailbox at a UPS store in an area with rural mail delivery.
capableweb 7y ago
> So I bet there is some internal API that searches or something for an address with all caps. Rather than something searching with all caps, isn't it more likely that the query/search is case-sensitive, and the data just happens to be stored/retrieved with all caps?
room500 7y ago
For USPS, they need to use OCR to read the address off the mail. In general, uppercase is more legible and avoids some issues (lowercase L vs uppercase I) Lowercase is acceptable, but it must meet their guidelines for OCR readability. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_002.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_002.htm

revx 7y ago

I got mine by typing my address in all lowercase, so ymmv :)

danso 7y ago

So this worked for me, but I hadn't tried since a couple weeks ago (maybe the all-caps thing was fixed by yesterday?). What's funny is that the subsequent step (verifying tax info) had a couple of other old-school slightly bad practices: - Blocking copy-paste of my bank account information - Input value for income can't contain commas or a dollar sign - Obscuring input field of SSN as if it were a password (I suppose this might not seem wrong to some folks, but technically SSN isn't a password and most other sites I've used don't treat it like a password)

robomartin 7y ago
An old college friend of mine from 30+ years ago used to write his SSN on every college book he bought. He also used an engraver to etch his SSN into every tool he owned. The SSN was't all that important back then. I can't say when it became something of potential value. Sadly he passes many years ago. His wife called me in desperation. She needed to get rid of and donate a bunch of tools and hardware filling their garage. However, everything had his SSN on it, I mean, he had an amazing collection of Snap-on tools with his SSN engraved on everything, down to the screwdrivers. She trust me implicitly. We took everything out of their garage and donated it to our local high school's robotics club. The caveat was: The kids had to help me grind off the SSN from every single tool they got. That was an interesting week.
- nhumrich 7y ago
  > cant say when it became something of value As soon as banks started allowing SSNs themselves instead of requiring an SSN card for establishing lines of credit.
- contravariant 7y ago
  Maybe this is a silly question, but exactly what was the risk? If knowing a random SSN is problematic then it's not exactly hard to just generate a couple yourself.
  - gt_grc 7y ago

singlow 7y ago

Been checking everyday without success. I haven't gotten a refund in several years, so I knew from the FAQ they would not have direct deposit info, even though they pulled the money I owed out using the same bank info. Tried all uppercase for my street address and it worked.

jupiter90000 7y ago

I was trying almost every day including yesterday, did this and it worked. If it is required to be all caps it'd be nice if the site said so... I guess maybe they just finally loaded my data.

bni 7y ago

This is not so surprising for someone that has worked a lot with legacy systems. Deep down somewhere there is a LIKE 'EML STREET%'. Making it case insensitive will kill the performance because the index cant be used.

talliedthoughts 7y ago
Right, but the system could convert the value to all caps after you enter it, no?
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  The contractors who designed this would need more time and money to add that feature. Probably 4 weeks, 100K.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    I was about to say. It could almost be a 2-liner Javascript (gasp!), 1 to import jQuery (more gasps!) and 1 to run all inputs through toUpperCase()... The bill will be 95K, thanks!
    - capableweb 7y ago
      To be fair, the 95K (imaginary, I know, but let's just roll with that) is not for paying you to write those four lines, but rather to pay you for your investment in knowing that you only have to write those four lines. Same as the restaurant bill is not equal+margin to what they spend on food, it's also everything else like rent, salaries + margin.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        Or rather, the 95K also includes the formal verification testing for the boatload of downstream systems that get the data. That is usually what makes cost in government projects explode as they are an utterly wild mix-and-match of code and hardware that is from the earliest era of mainframes 60 years ago to stuff that has been made in the last half year. Alone testing for encoding issues can take weeks... because most testing has to be done and verified manually.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

COBOL like caps?

fit2rule 7y ago
Yeah that was my initial reaction as well - seems like a clue that everything gets devolved to a COBOL backend. It really wouldn't surprise me.

ncmncm 7y ago

Also abbreviate address terms: RD, LN, ST, not Road, Lane, Street.

sp332 7y ago
Yes but also try with periods after all abbreviations. Ave. St. Ln. Ct. Apt. https://twitter.com/eruditechick/status/1253703820430827521 https://twitter.com/eruditechick/status/1253703820430827521

achairapart 7y ago

This may be the reason why every accountant I know live and breathe in perpetually CAPS LOCK ON mode.

mercora 7y ago

could this be because it bypasses a cached response? does it work if one just changes capitalization of any character? (i have no deal with the IRS so cant test myself)

ohyeahlaws 7y ago

I tried a 100 times but then used the shortened version of north and drive (ie N and Dr). And it worked. Shame on me for using the address spelled out on a letter from the IRS.

paypalcust83 7y ago

Fun fact: The IRS Economic Impact Payment (EIP) site for non-filers is run by Intuit. [0] You gotta love those who lobby against simplifying tax processes and harvest data on behalf of the IRS. And, I'm absolutely convinced Intuit will treat that sensitive data with the utmost respect and would never, ever resell a list of people who haven't filed taxes in a couple of years in order to discriminate against them in loan applications, leases, and purchases. 0. https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/static/privacy_statement.html https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/static/privacy_stateme...

Pxtl 7y ago

I accept that I have a number of beliefs that are considered heretical to other programmers. = Should be for testing equality, not assignment. Null should equal null in SQL. Whitespace is a bad delimiter. But my most heretical belief is that the only thing that should be case-sensitive is passwords. Any system that is case-sensitive by default will eventually break your heart about it in the stupidest possible way.

tobyhinloopen 7y ago
Everything should be case sensitive, except things that shouldn’t. Case-insensitivity by default everywhere will be a pain.
MrLeap 7y ago
I agree (with pedantic caveats not worth mentioning) with everything you've listed, unless you're using the regex view of what whitespace is and think the \t character is a bad delimiter, well then, that's where I draw the line.

gexla 7y ago

The payment status not available message was (still is? I don't need to check it anymore) a general error message. Also noticed the page is running Google Analytics. Might that be a privacy issue?

teilo 7y ago

The sovereign citizen types are going to make hay with this one.

qppo 7y ago

What bothers me is that they provide a single line to enter your information instead of the same form they have on your tax return. For probably good reasons they won't tell you if your input information is valid, if you intentionally put in a bad address it will tell you "payment status unavailable." It's annoying because I don't know if my issues are because of my tax status or my input information. A form would help with that. Particularly because my street has ambiguous naming and I don't know if it's what the street sign says, what the USPS prefers, or what is written on my tax return.