4 ms·

Why port a system from 40 years ago? I cannot imagine those systems are built with flexibility to endure policy changes of today.

• Jtsummers 6y ago
  Because a lot of business logic is probably hard coded and undocumented. Porting it moves it to a platform/language that may be better suited to continuing operations or applying the strangler pattern.
  • aejnsn 6y ago
    You're probably right. This problem just hits different in my mind because implementation is outlined in the IRC. If using the past is any way of predicting the future, I would imagine a history of bills and policy changes could indicate levels of necessary flexibility and where. I am looking at this with rose-colored glasses. :)
• hindsightbias 6y ago
  Because the IRS Masterfile is hard. Nobody alive today knows how it all works and 99.9% of coders have no experience with something that complicated. At the IRS, when the screen said one thing and the docs and regs said another, the software was right. Every time someone filled out the paperwork thinking theyd found a bug, a couple months later a letter came back with 20 years of tax code citations showing why you were wrong. We only found bugs in the software for new tax programs.
  • mjevans 6y ago
    The only way to kill the MCP... er... Masterfile is to modernize the tax code. Hopefully with something simpler to understand.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • redis_mlc 6y ago
      That isn't going to happen in the US because all those loopholes represent some politician flexing his power. No, I'm not exaggerating. I think in some of the Nordic countries they've done harmonization, but that can only occur when a technical solution is possible, and US politician want to retain political control of funding. Don't get me started about AMT. About a decade ago there was a poll of House members. All of them said they couldn't do their own taxes because of AMT, except one who was basically poor. For non-US readers, the US federal tax code consists of 2 parallel rules, regular and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). AMT was originally supposed to catch high-income earners, but after decades of inflation, catches basically anybody with a 6-figure salary, depending on the tax year. If you want your head to explode, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_minimum_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_minimum_tax
    • jbn 6y ago
      Exactly what https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32301945-a-fine-mess https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32301945-a-fine-mess argues. Note that it's not a US-only issue, France has exactly the same problem (too many obscure rules granting exemptions). Simplification results in a more just system, and it is entirely possible to lower tax while increasing tax revenue for the state (I think Sweden did this, can't find citation ATM).
• topspin 6y ago
  > Why port a system from 40 years ago? Because the 3 to 4 previous attempts (depending on how you count) over 5 decades costing tens of billions of today's dollars all failed to replace it[1]. Not that machine translation has been breakthrough panacea either, apparently, but at least they've shown enough flexibility to try a pragmatic approach. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/irs-predicted-tax-filing-failure https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/irs-predic...
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Why port a system from 40 years ago? I cannot imagine those systems are built with flexibility to endure policy changes of today. Because (1) you need access to data in the legacy system, from which exports are nontrivial and require understanding of the structure and flow of the system, because it's very much not a relational DB or other application-neutral datastore, (2) big-bang replacements of systems like this have a near-100% history of catastrophic, embarrassing failure that get lots of major media coverage and ends careers, so you need a way to port the existing system to a platform that is supportable long enough to make Ship of Theseus replacement viable,