Disaster Strikes Norwegian Government Web Portal 176
An anonymous reader writes "Altinn.no is a web service run by the Norwegian government, on which citizens can find, fill out and deliver forms electronically. Every year Norwegian citizens can also log in to check their tax results. This year, as every year, the site was unable to cope with the traffic generated from everyone wanting to check their taxes at the same time. New this year, however, was that once people were finally able to log in, a significant amount of people were logged in as someone else. Users then had access to all financial data of this unfortunate person over two years back in time, in addition to the financial information of his wife and the company he worked for. Altinn shut down some 15 minutes later, and has been down since."
Re:erm... whoops? (Score:4, Insightful)
threaded app server + global who_is_logged_in variable = big mess
Re:erm... whoops? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the people in charge: "This person visited 18:17 and checked his tax return, and for some reason or another there was an error in the system, and this page entered the so-called cache memory of our servers, where it doesn't belong". You can try to decipher from that what you will.
In other words, either the person who wrote that didn't know what he/she was doing, or else a manager got involved in the software design decisions and forced the programmer to incorporate a blazingly stupid idea.
In either case, someone probably said something vague about "saving cycles" and everyone else nodded.
Re:Remember how they file their taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is good, right? For 90% of citizens, govt calculation is good enough. The only reason it is not being implemented in the US is because of the lobbying of Tax processing services.
Cautionary tale about digital cash (Score:4, Insightful)
When everybody's money is 'stored' in a government computer somewhere saying how much money you have, imagine what happens when there's a glitch putting your money in someone else's account.
Yeah, I know, bank accounts.
But, glitches happen there, too. At least you have a little cash to get to and from the bank to pursue the matter. When it's digital all the way down, what will you do?
Re:Learn from the Experts, ye tax-boggled folks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most places know that a flat tax is horribly regressive. Anyway, it isn't the stepped rates that make the tax code complicated, it is all the loopholes, exceptions and deductions.
Re:Learn from the Experts, ye tax-boggled folks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the terms "progressive" and "regressive" when applied to taxes have been hijacked from their mathematical roots for political purposes. A flat tax is by definition not regressive, it's flat. A regressive tax is one whose effective tax rate decreases with increasing income. A progressive tax is one whose tax rate increases with increasing income.
A flat tax does neither. It is flat. It is the same effective tax rate regardless of income.
Where people get the idea that it is regressive is by pointing out that a certain fixed minimum amount of money needs to be spent on essentials (food, clothing, shelter). Poor people have to spend a greater percentage of their income on these essentials. Which means they have a smaller percentage of their income available for discretionary (optional) purchases. A flat tax takes the same percentage bite out of income, which turns into a larger proportional bite out of the discretionary income of poor people. e.g. Say $10k is the minimum needed for essentials, and the flat tax is 10%. A poor person making $15k has $5k discretionary income but pays $2k in taxes. That's 40% of his discretionary income. A rich person making $100k has $90k discretionary income but pays $10k in taxes. That's 11% of his discretionary income.
However, this has nothing to do with a flat tax. It is easily corrected by excluding from taxation the minimum amount which needs to be spent on essentials. Something like the standard deduction which the U.S. uses. Once you do that, the flat tax is then a tax only on discretionary spending, and is the same rate regardless of income. It is not regressive. e.g. After a $10k standard deduction, the poor person pays 10% tax on $5k. The rich person pays 10% tax on $90k. Both are paying 10% on their discretionary income. It is flat.
(I actually prefer a progressive tax, but hate it when people call a flat tax regressive. It's not if you implement the simple work-around of a standard deduction.)