IRS 2000

by Zola

The IRS has a problem. It knows it has a problem. Let's call it IRS 2000. IRS computer systems are a mess. In the Year 2000, they will be in a bigger mess. It's a fin-de-siecle blessing from the bowels of chaos which threatens to shut down many IRS functions. Too bad.

Unless, of course, the IRS does something about the underlying problems before then. An IRS master plan to fix its computers is outlined in a Treasury document entitled "Request for Comments (RFC) for Modernization Prime Systems Integration Services Contractor," May 15, 1997.

No, I don't know what the incoherent title means either.

But the IRS says it wants a "strategic partnership" with private industry. It wants private industry to keep it in business. Why? So that it can continue to drain resources away from the private sector and to pour them into the watering troughs of government mandarins well into the 21st Century.

What's the plan? It's hard to say. You've perhaps sometimes wondered why you couldn't understand tax forms? Well, chew over this sample of vintage prose from Arthur A. Gross, Associate Commissioner/Chief Information Officer:

"Future Modernization would be dependent on both the IRS and its contractors which operate these systems for the knowledge transfer and ongoing participation that would enable the design, development, integration, testing and implementation of the future Modernization systems."

Got that? It says that "Future Modernization will depend on future Modernization systems."

You don't need to speak English to work at the IRS. You just have to have your tautologies in order. And to learn to write gobble-de-gook headings like these:

"Communicating Feedback Regarding The Request For Comments (RFC)";

"Infrastructure: Leverage Century Date Conversion and Computing Center Consolidation to Position The Future Modernization Infrastructure";

"Deriving the Detailed Modernization Development Plan From The Incremental Decomposition of the Architecture".

Of course, the true master of IRS poetry can effortlessly merge twaddle and tautology, as evidenced by this item:

"Forging A Business Plan Through The Public/Private Partnership Commitment to Jointly Prepare Detailed Systems Development and Implementation Plans".

The IRS is going to come up with a plan due to its commitment to make a plan. Provided, of course, they can get their plan together.

Yes, the IRS has problems indeed. But they're not all due to people who can't write, and who can't think beyond their commitment to think. First, IRS computer systems don't talk to each other. Second, in its three main computing centers in Martinsburg (West Virginia), Detroit, and Memphis, the mainframe computers are not "Century Date Compliant". What this means is not always clear, but IRS operating systems apparently have problems making calendar calculations involving dates for the year 2000 and beyond. You know, the "Y2K" Problem. The same is true of the sixty mainframe computers in the ten IRS regional processing centers.

If you can't make date calculations, you can't calculate interest penalties, you don't know when tax amnesty sets in, and you can't process ordinary tax returns. Tax collection may grind to a halt.

Okay, you ask. What's the problem? Why mess with perfection?

Here's the problem: Some U.S. companies want to help the IRS out. Enticed by explicit promises of lucrative software contracts and implicit promises of no tax audits for years to come, otherwise good Americans are rushing forth to collaborate with the Tax Nazis, to "incrementally decompose the architecture," and to keep the IRS in business for another thousand years. It makes you want to cry.

Now. It may be that some computer-literate patriots are also signing up for software jobs. It is, after all, an opportune moment to plant assorted species of virii, logic bombs, Trojan horses, and network larvae into the central operating systems of the IRS. After all, it may not be possible to destroy Big Brother all at once. Instead, he may need to be incrementally decomposed.

For law-abiding people like myself, of course, the answer to the American Gestapo is the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. We could this way rid ourselves of the income tax, and all the agencies who oversee it, and the citizen monitoring that goes with it. But political solutions don't always work. A technological blow for freedom could become necessary. In Winn Schwartau's novel Terminal Compromise, someone lobs an EMP/T (Electro-Magnetic Pulse Transformer) bomb into the area of the New York Stock Exchange computer. It wipes the computer and brings stock trading to a halt.

I am still waiting for the novel where EMP/T bombs are put to much better use in Martinsburg, Detroit, and Memphis.

The principal behind an EMP/T bomb was learned back during the days of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. High atmospheric nukes send out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which causes havoc with electronic equipment. EMP/T bombs work by the same principal, but cause minimal physical destruction. The EMP wipes out computer memory and magnetically stored data.

A HERF (high-energy radio frequency) gun involves much the same concept. HERF guns transmit radiation which overloads computer and other circuits. Electronic data can be wiped clean. And computer chips with missing ROM data will not function. E-Systems of Dallas, Texas, has done work on a HERF weapon that targets aircraft computer systems. Some Interstate 5 traffic in California was recently the target of random HERF gun testing on automotive computer systems. (Many functions in your car are now controlled by microprocessors.) The results may not be as dramatic as directly sending a 880-volt charge across a 220-volt Cray supercomputer. But the methodology is nevertheless effective. When you are moving very fast, and none of your vehicle controls work, you know you're in trouble.

Now the nice thing about the IRS's Year 2000 ("Century Date") problem is that novel solutions to tyranny may not be required. The inherent deficiency in IRS computer system calendar functions has silently hibernated, waiting to deliver a hidden blessing in the final year of the 20th century. The IRS world is scheduled to become goo in time for the Presidential election of the year 2000, when the United States elects its first leader of the 21st Century. Who will undoubtedly make the usual assortment of tax promises that he has no intention of keeping.

But in the immortal words of Robert Anton Wilson, in the opening sentence of his novel Illuminatus, it could be "the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton." It certainly taxes the imagination.

Fernando Poo
December 27, 1997