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Which is a stupid design of software... In 2024, tax software ought not to have the tax rules hardcoded, but instead ask the tax authority for a fresh set of r
by londons_explore 3y ago
Which is a stupid design of software...
In 2024, tax software ought not to have the tax rules hardcoded, but instead ask the tax authority for a fresh set of rules at startup every time, and alert the user if the rules database ever gets more than 30 days out of date.
Nearly every government makes tax rule changes every year - it just isn't reasonable to hardcode them and require the user buy/install new software every year.
- niklasrde 3y agoSo updating the rules is not the same as updating the software? Who says this is different here? How do you define the difference between a "tax rule" and business logic? The changes go beyond tax band thresholds and percentages across NIC & IT. Eg the (now-scrapped) Health & Social Care Levy would've been a completely new tax - you need a complex schema to encode that and even then the Treasury will come up with something you haven't thought of next.
- cameronh90 3y agoI'm no expert on tax software, but my experience deploying it for accountants is that on-prem tax software is usually updated monthly to incorporate new rules. Tax rules are very complicated and often can't just be expressed as an entry in a database. In that context, downloading a fresh set of rules at startup is effectively the same as auto-updating.
- card_zero 3y agoExcept for not auto-breaking it so that it doesn't auto-work.