Perspective: IRS tech is so “archaic” the agency struggles to find people to work it
In one example, a Government Accountability Office report released this month notes the tax agency’s use of an “obsolete programming language” called COBOL, which could lead to “difficulty finding employees with such knowledge,” adding this “shortage of expert personnel available to maintain a critical system creates significant risk to an agency’s mission.”
“A private company with tens of millions of customers would go belly up if their information technology was older than the CEO’s parents,” said The use of obsolete systems, he added, “most certainly discourages people trained in cutting-edge computer technology from pursuing a career at the IRS.”Aggravating this old-age drama is the tax agency’s recent suspension of six modernization projects, which the GAO said includes operations “essential to replacing the 60-year-old Individual Master File ,” described as “the authoritative data source” for individual tax accounts.
All this makes trouble for taxpayers, who paid $4.1 trillion in taxes and were refunded $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2021.accompanying the report, David B. Hinchman, the watchdog’s director of IT & cybersecurity, said the program “isn’t capable of accessing detailed information on an individual’s tax return status,” leaving many disappointed.
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