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Larry Wan
If The IRS Was Run Like Microsoft
"Government should be run like a business." We've all heard that
chestnut. Here is how the Internal Revenue Service (nobody's favorite government agency)
would be like, if only it were run like Microsoft Corp. (a successful private enterprise).
-- 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.
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