Over the past nine months, the Isaac Brock Society has built up an impressive collection of posts, many containing links to hard-to-find information buried in the nooks and crannies of the IRS website. Well, the IRS, in the process of their oh-so-helpful website redesign, just broke a bunch of those web page links. (Links to PDF forms and publications still seem to be okay, for now, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they broke those too later.) If you follow an old link, you’ll get the wonderfully-helpful message:
We have redesigned the IRS.gov website to make it easier and faster to find the information you need. If you have reached this page by selecting a bookmark that worked previously, it is likely the URL has changed. To navigate to the new redesigned IRS website click on the homepage link. You may also Search the site for specific information. Once you have arrived at the desired page, please update your bookmark.
What happened? Did they decide to disappear a bunch of inconvenient documents down the memory hole? Apparently not; they just moved it all around, which is almost as good: breaking thousands of links makes it harder and slower, not “easier and faster to find the information you need”. Even more strangely, some old links work — as if the IRS went through their website and picked a few random items to fix by hand, instead of bothering to figure out an automated solution to make sure all the old links remained working. Now those of us who have time and energy will have to go back and fix all of our old posts. Unfortunately there is no easy fix; you have to do it by hand. I give one example of how I did it below.
In technical terms, when you change the URL of a webpage, it is standard practise to leave an “HTTP 301 redirect” (or if that is not possible, a little JavaScript program) behind at the old URL, so that visitors from other places which still link to the old URL will be automatically forwarded to the new URL. For example, when Petros moved the Isaac Brock Society to Canada, making sure that old links still worked was an extremely basic and obvious item on the checklist.
Apparently one unpaid volunteer is more competent than the entire IT staff of the IRS.
Oddly enough, not all links are broken. For example, in this old post by swisspinoy, the link with the false claim that “EVERYONE is eligible to free file!” still works, but the link informing U.S. Persons abroad about their ongoing tax filing obligations is broken. Think that the IRS breaking its website will be accepted as a “reasonable cause” argument for not knowing that you have to file one of their ridiculous forms? Dream on.
A concrete example of this problem and how to fix it by hand: my old post “Almost no U.S. Persons abroad properly report their foreign retirement accounts on Form 3520” linked to the following URL:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=97017,00.html
I didn’t remember what the title of that web page was, so I couldn’t just Google it up. And besides, at the moment Google has only indexed the old IRS URLs, not the new ones. For example, the top result in this search for “Germany US Tax Treaty” leads nowhere:
So I went to the Internet Archive to get an old copy of the page. From that I found out the title: “SOI Tax Stats: Foreign Trusts”. Since, like I mentioned above, Google still hasn’t fully digested the IRS’ redesign, you have to use the IRS website’s internal search function. That brought me to the new URL:
http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats—Foreign-Trusts
All over the internet, thousands of website maintainers are wasting their mornings or evenings doing this exact same thing just to get back to where they were before, all because the IRS cannot be bothered to follow extremely basic website design practises. Just another small example of how the IRS wastes other people’s time and money for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
Yes, I discovered that today doing a post on the new guidelines. If you go back to the home page and enter the title of the old page it will come up quickly. But, this is a real problem and definitely undermines a great deal of research, not just here, but at a number of other blogs.
also disappeared from that latest instruction to backfile 3 1040x’s and 6-8 FBARs is those criteria about education level, sophistication of expert tax help, and other Stalinistic criteria
Reasonable cause, indeed! 🙂
The really annoying thing is that there are clearly competent IT people somewhere in the feddle gummint — for example, whoever runs http://www.federalregister.gov, which is actually quite well-designed and easy to use.
Which just goes to show how they misallocate their talent to the wrong projects — how many people per year do you think read the Federal Register’s fascinating notices about extensions to approved paperwork collections, as compared to the number of people who visit the IRS website looking for information about how to file their taxes?
USxCanada InfoShop has checked and updated where necessary all known IRS links, specifically in (1) the ongoing main listing of articles, news releases, etc. (2) Documents (3) Glossary.
The more chaos the better. An inefficient enemy is an ineffective enemy. May chaos rule!
I received two copies of the same letter on the same day from the IRS which said that I need to resubmit my revised 2009 Form 2555 which I have faxed to the international office in Philadelphia. Apparently, page three jammed. So they sent two copies of the same letter to me, arriving on the same day, requesting that I resubmit page 3 (all the important and necessary information was on the first two pages in any case–so they didn’t really need page 3 to assess whether my claim to FEIE was valid, which is why they sent me a bill for over $3000). They still don’t use e-mail, which would reduced costs on paper (fax), telecommunications, and snail mail.
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*@Moby, Just Me and everyone
I will be writing a very strong letter about FATCA, FBAR etc to the Australian Treasury. Also will be writting to PMs about all this unfair treatment of US persons.
Remember Steve Irwin (Australia Zoo) He wife and children would be US persons. I wonder if she is aware of what is going on.
I will urge as many people I know to write in the the AUS Treasury/Government!
We must make a stand for Human Rights!
@upset: I may write too (I have a very distant connection to Australia — worked there once many years ago), but I think the only argument that will be really persuasive to the Australian government — and which gives them something concrete to implement — is to demand that any Inter-Governmental Agreement does not exempt banks or regulators from the requirement to get consent from individual accountholders before sending their data overseas.
I don’t think they will go any further than that in standing up for U.S. Persons — but even that would be a victory compared to what the EU-5 are forcing on their residents.
@Eric
I agree and thanks for any help you can give. The more letters the better.
Bring on the class action once all this starts to happen!
@Upset and others
I’ve been circling my Oz Treasury submission and had a bit of an epiphany as to how to frame it. I’m going to take the position that the greatest possible evil is the IGA, and individual bank FATCA agreements are less worrying. Here is why:
1) Banks are lying when they say they can’t comply with FATCA due to citizenship discrimination laws (i.e. Australian Racial Discrimination Act 1975). When the banks request information about citizenship, and pass peoples’ account and personal details to the IRS, they cannot do this just for the USAians. In order not to discriminate they have to pass the same details for 100% of their customers (including all “ordinary” domestic Australians) to the IRS. An ordinary Australian that denies permission to the bank to hand over their details to the IRS will have their account closed, just like a USAian.
2) Some banks will choose to be Non-FATCA banks because of the sheer number of “ordinary” Australians that don’t need access to the US financial system, don’t like the idea of the US govt receiving all their financial details, and don’t like the increased bank fees that FATCA compliance will require for use of those services.
3) Non-FATCA banks will become the dominant financial institutions in Australia, and co-exist happily in the international environment of Non-FATCA institutions (driven to the equivalent structure by their respective country’s anti-discrimination laws). I would estimate that 80% of Australian banking business will be Non-FATCA. USAians will simply shift to the Non-FATCA banks, and slip further away from the reach of Uncle Sam.
The IGA is far worse because it means there is no bank in the country that is safe, and the government essentially circumvents its own anti-discrimination laws by signing one.
Call me crazy, but this is how I see it.
@ Moby,
Another FATCA meme to consider:
FATCA will unleash a Trade War in the global financial sector. Primarily this will be between foreign financial institutions and the US financial market, but additionally between FATCA-compliant and non-compliant institutions and states.
The key weapon in trade wars is the Embargo. And Europe’s banks are already embargoing anyone with a US tie. This will spread to US entities, investments, and other connections. Eventually, any financial activity with a US nexus will be affected.
Institutions and states will have an incentive to conduct their dealings outside of this “war zone” by avoiding US nexus. This will lead to “neutral zone” non-FATCA markets. The question: which jurisdiction will be the new Switzerland? China is well positioned.
Consider this excerpt from Dave Eggers new novel on globalization, A Hologram For The King:
“Every day, Alan, all over Asia, hundreds of container ships are leaving their ports, full of every kind of consumer goods… These are actual things. They’re making things over there, and we’re (Americans) making websites and holograms, while sitting in chairs made in China, working on computers made in China, driving over bridges made in China. Does this sound sustainable to you, Alan?”
*Moby and everyone
I agree with your perspective and we are against the IGA. If the AUS Government enters into an IGA we will NEVER vote for that Government again in any election ever again.
AUS banking is dominated by the big four which want and are pushing for the IGA. The ABA wants the IGA!
Is NZ dominated by the big four? If the AUS Government enters into an IGA then what will the NZ Government do?
We feel that if our greedy profit driven banks want to implement FATCA then they should bare the costs and hopefully if the costs are to great they simply will not implement FATCA?
Our concern is our privacy and what next if the planet complies with FATCA – the IRS can get away with what ever it wants!