Computer Foul-up Breaks Canadian Tax Filing System

CokeJunky writes "During a weekend maintenance window, the Canada Revenue Agency (Fills the same role as the IRS south of the border) experienced data corruption issues in the tax databases. As a precaution, they have disabled all electronic filling services, and paper based returns will be stacking up in the mail room, as returns cannot be filed at all until the problem is fixed. Apparently on Monday they discovered tax fillings submitted electronically where the social insurance number, and the date of birth were swapped."

Data Types

[truckaxle]

"Apparently on Monday they discovered tax fillings submitted electronically where the social insurance number, and the date of birth were swapped."

Sounds like a serious upfront data validation issue.

However, those two fields should be of a different types and the insert should fail.

Re:What was the setup

[Stephen Samuel]

I would expect that anybody who could generate a foulup of this magnitude could do it on pretty much any combination of OS, HW and DB.

Dammit

[webax]

F*$#. I just filed my taxes last Friday with this system. I just checked their web page, thank goodness they have an information bulletin that the system is down for maintenance with absolutely no information about whether my return was affected or not.

I'm sure I'll get a nasty call a couple years from now, with a few thousand dollars in fines attached. They will attempt to convince me it was my fault taht they screwed up my information. How do I know this because I've spent the last 4 years trying to clean up the confusion when they swapped my social insurance number with someone else who happens to have the exact same name.

CRA: "You lied, and put someone else's social insurance number down on your employment record."
me: "Mmmmhmmm, I went and found someone out there with the exact same name, stole their SIN number, and filed a tax returns with that number FOR THREE YEARS just to see if you'd catch me."
CRA: "You're lucky we are only applying financial charges for the trouble."
me: "I claimed every penny I made and I paid full tax on it, and you still want more money?"
CRA: "That is because you provided false identification."
me: "Even though you (apparently) had no record of me being employed anywhere, you audited me every year and approved my tax returns. Now FIVE years after the initial mistake you realize I owe you MORE money?"
CRA: "Our records show that you provided false identification."

Although its nearly impossible to deal with these people, the story does have a happy ending. The government eventually paid me back all of the extra money they had taken from me, no interest mind you, but it's better than nothing. I still find it mind boggling that they audited me every year for three years, and it took them five years to admit that they mixed up their data.

So yes, I expect a call in a few years.

At least I know everyone in the first world probably has to deal with a similar taxation system, that's some comfort. I think I'm really starting to support the fair tax idea...

Bad computer! BAD!

[waynemcdougall]

Computer Foul-up Breaks Canadian Tax Filing System

How long must we put up with these computers fouling up our systems? We've been taxing people for hundreds of years with no problems worth mentioning [wikipedia.org].

Bring back trustworthy, reliable humans and we will have no more of these computer foul-ups.

Validation means nothing

[camperdave]

Just because you've validated the data doesn't mean that you can't store it in the wrong field in the database, especially if both fields are numeric. An 8 digit date will fit into a 9 digit SIN field, and a SIN will fit into a date field if it's one of those "number of seconds since some arbitrary point in time" kind of date fields. However, it sounds from the article that there may be a little more wrong than two swapped fields.

I just hope they get it sorted out before I'm ready to file. I don't want to fill out a paper form. This is the 21st Century after all. Besides, I wouldn't even know where to get a paper form.

CCRA Messing with their systems at tax time

[landoltjp]

I can certainly understand why the systems administrators want to keep the CCRA machines in the best state. However, messing with them at this particular time is rather ... well, let's go with skull-crushingly stupid.

Returns from across the country are going to be coming in. hundreds of thousands of returns will come through the online submission systems. Those machines should've been frozen at Christmas. The Bank that I used to work at had a freeze on their, c machines right near (or after) Christmas in preparation for the onslaught of transactions related to RRSP (US-401K) season).ulminating the lat week of February.

I'm not sure when the DST patches came out for the affected machines, but it seems that they would've been more intellegent about when they were applied.

Plus, no fail-over plan? No back up services? (or were they patched at the same time?) no roll-back? Uhm, naw, we'll just shut 'em down. Yes that works. I mean, who would mind?

Re:CCRA

[CastrTroy]

That would require that most of the people working on these systems not to be complete idiots. Having worked in the government sector, and knowing some people who work in different government agencies, I can estimate that about 80% of people working in the government have absolutely no idea what they're doing.