New Orleans    The IRS has problems. I get that. Well hated as a necessary evil, the Republican Congress has cut their budget to the nub in recent years to make it harder to collect taxes. In the 2015 tax season millions rightly complained that they had a better chance of talking to Santa Claus long distance from the North Pole than getting the IRS on the phone to handle a question. But, we have problems with the IRS, too, and part of the problem is with their plan to go even higher tech with a system of online taxpayer accounts and even worse to outsource more of the work to third party tax preparers, who have done little to earn anyone’s trust of the years.

The Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, an independent office within the IRS, points out the obvious about the IRS’s new grand plan reminding them that millions don’t have internet access so what the heck? And, these are some of the folks that might need the most help. The Advocate in her annual report zinged her IRS employer as trying to create a “pay-to-play” system and essentially accused them of trying to run away from Jane and Joe Citizen Taxpayer. She also noted that lower income families were already been targeted too often by unscrupulous tax preparers asking, “Why would we want to give these preparers even more access to taxpayer information.” From ACORN’s experience in negotiating with H&R Block, Jackson-Hewitt, and Liberty Tax Services – the big three – who the IRS probably see as the good guys – were the same outfits that invented and fought tenaciously to hold onto completely predatory products like refund anticipation loans by spitting on the IRS for being a couple of days slower therefore worth paying what might amount to 350% or more in interest to get your refund a wee bit earlier.

Let’s be honest. In solving consumer problems, the internet does not make it easier by one iota to solve a problem for anyone with any outfit, it just makes it cheaper for the companies by reducing the staffing account of real problem solvers. This is a job reduction program, not a problem solving solution.

A couple of days ago I spent 75 minutes on the AT&T website and chat room trying to get a bill which is to say, trying to give them money! And, that didn’t fix it. They claimed they had been trying to send me a bill by email, but never managed to get it to me. Two days later when I summoned my resolve to try again I was finally able to get the amount owed and the address to send it, but was only able to get it fixed when then finally gave me an 800 number and a woman named LaShonda to get me straight. Their money is now in the mail, and, no indeed, after all of that would I have ever trusted them enough to electronically send the money.

PayPal has to be one of the most sophisticated and seamless of the new internet tech companies in the Silicon Valley. They are giving away a device so that you will use PayPal at the point of sale. KABF, the great noncommercial 100,000 watt station said, good idea. We are now caught in the second day of a dispute resolution process because they want us to verify the address and social security number of the station, but only wanted a utility bill. No phone number to call. No person who can work it out. We have now sent them 8 different pieces of information via the internet, and the only thing they have accepted on the upload and checked, “resolved,” was a personal passport, which a noncommercial corporation doesn’t even have. Geez!

And, those are two of a gazillion examples just this week, and I’m at least as smart as the average bear and a couple of steps away from being a techno-peasant. We’ve already had the huge internet enrollment fiascoes on the Affordable Care Act, and now we’re going to move the whole online system over to the IRS. We haven’t crossed the internet divide yet, but I can assure you this plan will engulf us in total and abject horror on the other side of gulf, if we’re ever able to get there at all!