"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.


Michael Glass  mglass@fnalv.fnal.gov
Reva Freedman  freedman@merle.acns.nwu.edu