来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2023年2月22日
Sixty-four years old. That’s the age of the technology that parts of the Internal Revenue Service currently rely upon to process tax returns. It’s time to retire it.
64岁。这是美国国税局部分部门目前处理纳税申报单所依赖的技术的年龄。是时候让它退休了。
As the IRS has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent years, many of its woes have become well known: It answered only 13 percent of calls last year. It has a paperwork backlog that includes millions of unprocessed returns. It is beset by ongoing staffing shortages, notably the fewest auditors since World War II. There’s been some improvement. The IRS has hired 5,000 more workers to answer calls and significantly reduced the backlog, but huge challenges remain.
近年来，随着美国国税局在一个又一个危机中蹒跚而行，它的许多困境已经众所周知：去年它只接听了13%的电话。它的文书工作积压如山，其中包括数百万份未处理的纳税申报表。它受到持续的人员短缺的困扰，审计人员是自二战以来最少的。目前已经有了一些改善。美国国税局已经雇用了5000多名工作人员接听电话，并大大减少了工作积压，但巨大的挑战仍然存在。
Its outdated technology has yet to be addressed. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlights just how dire the IT situation is. Not only are the applications and hardware ancient, but some of the software it uses are up to 15 versions behind the current one. “These legacy assets will continue to contribute to security risks, unmet mission needs, staffing issues, and increased costs,” the GAO concludes.
其过时的技术尚未得到解决。美国政府问责局(GAO)的一份新报告强调了信息技术形势的严峻。不仅应用程序和硬件陈旧，而且它使用的一些软件比当前版本落后了15个版本。GAO总结道：“这些遗留资产将继续导致安全风险、无法满足任务需求、人员配备问题和成本增加。”
A key problem is the “Individual Master File” that has been in use since 1970, when Richard M. Nixon was president and the Chevrolet Chevelle was a hot car. They both are long gone, but the Individual Master File is still the main database to collect and store taxpayer information. It was built with antiquated programming languages COBOL and Assembly. The IRS says it finally updated some code last year, but COBOL remains in use. Until the master file is fully modernized, it will remain a colossal task to get real-time information on refunds and processing status to taxpayers, not to mention assure the latest safety and fraud precautions. The target date to entirely replace the master file is now 2030, but the GAO warns it’s unlikely the IRS will meet that deadline.
一个关键问题是“个人主文件”，它自1970年开始使用，当时理查德·m·尼克松担任总统，雪佛兰Chevelle是一款热门汽车。它们都早已不复存在，但个人主文件仍然是收集和存储纳税人信息的主要数据库。它是用过时的编程语言COBOL和汇编语言构建的。美国国税局表示，去年终于更新了一些代码，但COBOL仍在使用。在主文件完全现代化之前，向纳税人提供有关退款和处理状态的实时信息仍将是一项艰巨的任务，更不用说确保最新的安全和欺诈预防措施了。完全取代主文件的目标日期是2030年，但政府问责局警告说，国税局不太可能在最后期限前完成。
This is unacceptable. Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year, giving the IRS almost $80 billion to improve operations. Half that money is for more auditors to pursue corporate and high-earning tax cheats, but about $30 billion is for improving basic services, including IT and staffing. These upgrades are urgently needed. House Republicans are wrong to attempt to strip away this funding, but lawmakers in both parties should press for faster results.
这是不可接受的。民主党去年通过了《通胀削减法案》，向国税局提供了近800亿美元用于改善运营。这笔钱的一半用于让更多的审计员追查公司和高收入人士的逃税行为，大约300亿美元用于改善基本服务，包括IT和人员配置。这些升级是迫切需要的。众议院共和党人试图剥夺这笔资金的做法是错误的，但两党议员都应该争取更快的结果。
Tax filing season is underway and there have already been problems. The IRS told people to wait to file their returns if they lived in about 22 states that sent out some type of inflation relief payment last year. This is because the IRS was deliberating on the question of whether these payments count as income on federal tax returns. That’s a valid issue, but one the IRS should not have waited until after tax season began to decide.
报税季正在进行，已经出现了一些问题。美国国税局告诉人们，如果他们居住在去年发放了某种通胀救济金的大约22个州，就可以延缓提交纳税申报表。这是因为美国国税局正在考虑这些付款是否算作联邦纳税申报单上的收入。这是一个合理的问题，但美国国税局不应该等到纳税季开始后才做出决定。
Amid stumbles such as that one, it might be all too easy to put IT upgrades on the back burner again. But for an agency that has lost so much of the public’s confidence, those upgrades would represent a badly needed step forward — into the 21st century.
在众多这样的失误中，IT升级可能很容易再次被搁置。但是对于一个已经失去了如此多公众信任的机构来说，IT升级将代表着进入21世纪急需迈出的一步。