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Fredericton Daily Gleaner ~ Capital Appreciation ~ Computers ~ March 12, 2007 - 06 May 2007 by TaxHelp
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Computers.
Roger Haineault – “Capital Appreciation” – March 12, 2007.
Did you hear about the big computer problem that some of us are having? And no, I’m not talking about why you may have had trouble getting out of bed this morning, although the Daylight Savings Time change ended up being a massive issue for some of us. You might think – hey what’s the big deal – just move the clock on your computer ahead an hour. But, when you have a variety of networks, with multiple operating systems it becomes much more complex. And if you don’t factor in your calendar functions all of a sudden the quality of your automated appointment book is out the window.
The biggest chuckle I had about this issue? We, like most are operating a couple of standard server software systems, but we have desktops that run all the way from Windows 98 (operating legacy software) through XP (we have yet to jump into the Vista pool and we’re not even thinking about the Longhorn project). Anyway, W98 is no longer supported and Windows 2000 Professional ended its support cycle awhile back. Current products have support through either downloadable patches or automatic updates. We decided to use the Microsoft information in their knowledge base to update our W2K boxes manually since, and I quote from their site, “Customers will only be charged a single fee of $4,000 to obtain all hotfixes needed to update their systems for DST 2007.” I thought you’d smile too!
Speaking about patches, the other huge news story last week, and the one disrupting many Canadians is the systems issues the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is currently experiencing. I prefaced this column to point out that all businesses undergo routine maintenance. The DST issue is extraordinary in that everyone feels it. But it’s been on the radar for a couple of years now. Over the course of the tax season, our software developer releases a number of versions as more forms are released and fixes are required. We deploy the software on weekends to provide as little business disruption as necessary.
On the evening of Saturday, March 3 the CRA also did some routine maintenance and applied some patches. Talk about unintended consequences! Somewhere buried in a line of code was a little time bomb that ended up corrupting a reported 75 databases. So the good thing to know is that this was in fact, self-inflicted and not the result of any external virus or incident of hacking. The other point to make right off the top is that none of your data is lost. But I’ve been asked continually what’s happening, so here goes.
Last Monday morning we began to see a noticeable slowdown in service. By midday, one of the subsystems we connect to that provides us with information on customer files – sources of government income and so on – was down. Shortly thereafter the EFILE portal became unavailable. None of this is extraordinary. After all, we expected big volumes. The T4 issuance deadline and the RRSP 2006 purchase deadline fell at the end of the previous week.
When we couldn’t connect throughout the evening, I finally packed it in at 3 AM. In Atlantic Canada the systems are downed routinely for maintenance between 4 and 7 AM overnight. At 7 AM I was on-line waiting with baited breath to see if we could file. When our connection attempts failed, I knew that catastrophic wasn’t too strong a word to describe the potential problem.
After chatting with some of my friends I recognized our prospects were poor for an early system recovery. In fact, in order to provide some security, all public portals were shut down, employee-client interface was curtailed and processing of returns was halted. If you called an 800 line, you were given very limited historical data. Anything more was met with the ubiquitous “Our systems are down” statement. The earliest resolution anyone could envision was for this Monday, and as of Friday, the hope is actually to meet the March 15 transaction date, when employers have to submit payroll taxes and individuals on the installment plan have to remit.
If they don’t come up Monday or Tuesday will the seasonal staff at the CRA be facing layoffs? Highly unlikely, as they are ready and trained and if sent home not all people will return as they find other work in the meantime. Our friends at the government know that they will require more skilled help and not less after this, so layoffs are out.
Will there be a filing extension? While that conversation is probably not even happening, much of that will depend on the length of downtime, and the amount of returns filed when the system comes up. Firms like ours are working through this with stockpiles of your files waiting for processing when the switch is turned on. If the volume is where it should be, then probably there will be no extension unless they grant one as an emotional benefit, since there are about 50 days left to file.
What about tax preparer clients who have been waiting to sell their refund for a discounted cheque? They should probably sit tight. Some people estimate that up to 20 per cent of the manually calculated returns are inaccurate based on a lack of high quality information. And while it’s tempting for firms to capture market share by giving out refunds during this period, our position is that we defend our client rather than chase profit at a time like this. After all, I don’t want to be the guy to take away someone’s summer vacation by having their refund reassessed thereby creating a debt in the hundreds of dollars just because of market opportunities.
Finally, what about the self-filer? If you haven’t received a Notice of Assessment yet, you’ve probably mailed it and chances are its sitting waiting to be scanned at the Taxation Centre in St. John’s.
What time was your appointment again?
Roger Haineault is with Help 4 Taxes. He can be reached by email at roger@help4taxes.ca or by calling 443-HELP (4357). His column appears Mondays.
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