Good news! Sort of!

I just learned today that at least one part of the U.S. Government is working.  The Internal Revenue Service!

I made no assumptions about the IRS being open or closed by Donald Trump's shutdown.  I sent my quarterly estimated Federal Income Tax payment by the due date.  Normally, the IRS takes a few weeks to cash my check.  When I checked my bank balance this morning, I found that my check had been cashed by someone.  I can only assume that it was the IRS; the image of the back of the check is hard to read.

U.S. Tax Preparation, special interests making our life miserable

I posted the following comment to “Filling taxes in japan is a breeze, why not here?”, T.R. Reid, New York Times, 2017-04-17.

When we lived in Italy and Sweden (1968-1974) we filled out four-page forms for those countries' taxes. And then we had to at least fill out a two-page form for the U.S. But we didn't have much investment income then.

I have tried tax software, but their question format takes longer than doing my own spreadsheet. I tried the Free-Filer that the IRS site links to, but it doesn't provide instant recalculations like my spreadsheet does.

Maybe I shouldn't say this because some lobbyist will get Congress to take this benefit away: the IRS does provide fillable PDF forms that you can fill out offline instead of handwriting the data.

I should have added to my comment the old adage: We have the best Congress that money can buy!

Look who's outsourcing!

It is tax time and time to figure out all the labyrinthian details that Congress has charged the IRS with implementing. I must say that the IRS had done a lot of work to make our work easier - PDF savable files for forms, online calculators to determine if you need a particular form, and many other features that often make it easier than wading through all the paper instructions. Oh yes, no more trips to the library to get forms that weren't included in your personal mailing.

I used one of those calculators yesterday. It's fields were to small to enter in the number of digits that I should enter. I found a contact link and filled out a web mail about the problem.

Within a few hours, maybe less, I had a response from IRS Help Desk asking what operating system and browser I was using. I sent all the requested information back this afternoon and within an hour or so I had a response that my info would be forwarded to the appropriate department for review.

Hey, that is speedy government service. Wait a minute! The email address is not irs.gov but speedymail.com. Hm! Who's speedymail.com?

It is AFFINA, a "one-stop-shop solution for customer relationship management." The story doesn't stop there. In 2006 AFFINA joined Hinduja Global Solutions Limited http://www.hindujagsl.com Hm! One guess in what country that company is located.

Some may complain that the U.S. Government should not be exporting jobs. But I can't say that it is. I don't know where the work of AFFINA is conducted. Besides, the idea of where jobs for a government are done often gets down to we can export our stuff but you can't export yours to us.

When I worked in Europe, for an American company, I was called in for software assistance to the French Army, the Swedish Police (Rikspolisen), the Swedish Auto Registry (Bilregistret), and a few other government agencies. They all had bought American-made Univac computers.

And even more crazy, many European customers thought the American programmers knew more than the local programmers. On some things this was true and on others just the opposite.

Back to speedymail.com, the writing of the messages was straightforward. None of the elaborate "It is my pleasure to serve you today" or turns of phrase that almost shout "Non-native speaker".