Yay IRS!

STIPIMM: “All You Need Is Love,” by the Beatles

Monday and Tuesday were very big days at work, thus my breaking of my promise to tell you about the improve events of the past two weeks. Fear not, I’ll get to it soon, but first I’ll tell you why Monday and Tuesday were so important and busy for me.

Most of you know that I currently work for H&R Block in Cambridge (our fair city), right across the river from my town of Brighton. I’m in their TaxCut division, which is the software that consumers can buy to do their taxes. I’m one of the people who take the tax forms that the IRS and the states create and convert them into electronic versions for our software – essentially layout and editing. I’m in charge of keeping track of the forms for 20 states, including Oklahoma and Maryland, as well as all the forms that come in from the IRS. In most cases, the IRS and states first submit draft forms and later make final revisions.

Monday: Up until the first of November, federal forms had been stuck in draft mode; usually, they are made final during the first weeks of October. But in August, some bitch named Katrina visited the U.S. and created a whole lot of homeless people in need of tax credits. Congress had to enact these credits, which they eventually did, and they had to be integrated into this year’s tax forms. But as anything in D.C., it takes time, so there were delays in the forms. And since just about every state has something on their tax forms which references line numbers on the federal forms (especially form 1040), until the fed forms went final, the states weren’t going to go final either.

It all rose to the level of emergency in our office, because it basically hamstringed us from progressing with our work. It got so that they created a Katrina Task Force which meets every week to talk about ramifications of the hurricane. I’m proud to say that I’m a member of that task force. No, we do not get a jacket.

Last Tuesday, now that all the possible legislation for tax year 2005 has passed, some of the lesser federal forms began to be posted for public use on the IRS webpage (that’s my cue that those forms are final): Form 3800 – General Business Credit; Form 8814 – Parent’s Election to Report Child’s Interest and Dividends. Exciting stuff, sure, but for me, who had been twiddling my thumbs with the federal forms for weeks, it was a gust of fresh air.

And then, on Monday, the granddaddy of all the forms went final: Federal Form 1040 for the year 2005 was released on the IRS website that morning. And that broke the floodgates, both for the feds and the states. Where once it was piecemeal, the work is now steady and quick. States going final, forms flying everywhere, dogs and cats living together.

That was Monday.

Tuesday: Yes, I did vote, but that’s not why it was important (two governor’s races and a few mayors? Puh-lease). Tuesday was known to us at H&R Block as FCS Day. FCS stands for First Customer Ship, meaning the day when our product first gets created to be put in boxes and sent to stores. It is really the turning-point day here at TaxCut: before FCS Day, everyone’s working to improve and perfect the software; after it, all we can really do is tweak.

And there is a lot of tweaking to do, especially in my department. Like I said, we were just getting the final versions of some forms the day before – no way were they going to be up-to-date for the FCS. So the product, as purchased, ends up having lots and lots of draft forms. Only if you were lucky enough to live in South Carolina and Arizona would your state have all its forms ready for you, and even then, you’d have to wait for an update to the federal forms.

Why ship out a product when it’s obviously not ready for full use? Ask Bill Gates. Actually, for us, it’s a matter of racing to get the product on the shelves for customers to purchase. If our competitors get their products on the shelf before we do, then we might lose a lot of customers to them. So the idea is hook them with the purchase, and then get them to download the updates in January.

As yesterday came to a close, congratulatory e-mails from the bigwigs were sent around to everyone. The worst of the tax season is behind us, or at least for the software developers. This afternoon, after work, all employees are invited to a bar next door for a company happy hour. I’ll be there for sure… as soon as I finish up Alabama.