IRS braces for year 2000 collapse
Wednesday April 29 9:10 PM EDT
WASHINGTON, April 29 (UPI) _ The beleaguered Internal Revenue Service has more problems than just this week's hostile
Senate oversight hearings.
Agency executives warn that the nation's tax network could cease to function in less than two years, when the year 2000
computer crash hits the IRS's massive data network.
Come midnight Jan. 1, 2000, computers programmed to read only the last two digits of a four-digit year face meltdown as
they try to process 01/01/00. Some may read the date as 1900 _ a particular problem for the IRS, if its computers decide that
every taxpayer in America hasn't even been born yet. Other computers may malfunction or shut down entirely.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti has warned Congress that it will cost at least $850 million to make the thousands of
agency computer systems year-2000 compliant. The IRS boasts one of the largest information systems in the nation, but it
operates on computer programs written in the 1960s and 1970s.
The agency is also struggling with tax code changes from Congress's Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. Rossotti estimates the
agency will have to change about 800 computer systems this year.
In response, Senate Finance Committee chairman William Roth, R-Del., offered to reallocate $50 million in unspent IRS
budget funds from previous years for the year 2000 effort. But he waved aside Rossotti's suggestion that Congress delay
implementation of the new tax laws until the IRS is up to speed.
A Roth spokeswoman said, ''His feeling is that taxpayers can't call the IRS and say, 'Oh, my computer doesn't work, can I
have a two-year delay?'''
The IRS is hardly alone in its struggle against the immovable millennium deadline. A recent government audit concluded that
fewer than half of government agencies will have even their most critical systems upgraded in time.
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