The cost of changing VAT

[syniqal]

The last week has been an experience I would prefer not to repeat. On Monday, 24th November, 2008, Her Majesty’s Treasury announced a 2.5% reduction in VAT to enter into effect on Monday, 1st December, 2008, for a period of thirteen months. Implementing this change in a well-designed computer system is fairly simple: Alter a setting in one or two

Comments

[tallanvor]

Sorry man, but it's not the government's fault that your system (or anyone elses) was not designed properly. Big businesses won't be affected much because properly designed systems can accept different sales taxes easily.

It sucks for you to have to make the change, and I sympathize with the regards to the amount of work you have, but I don't feel bad for your company - they never should have paid someone to perform such crappy work.

[syniqal]

It's not the Government's fault that the system is badly designed; it's the Government's fault that we only got five days' notice.

[adelpha]

As this is something intended to increase spending, a long wait would have had the opposite effect - people stop spending and wait until the rate change.

I wonder how many of the badly designed apps were done that way intentionally. Nothing like being called back to make changes to something that was originally an assumption in the spec. Even better if the client signed off on it ;)

[tallanvor]

Exactly. Even if they had made the decrease take effect on Jan 1, a lot of people would have held off purchases and hurt a lot of retailers.

I doubt, however, that many of the applications were purposely designed to be hard to change. It's more likely the programmer just never thought that VAT might change. This sort of problem is less common in the States (but by no means nonexistent) because tax rates vary by state, and often local communities have their own special taxes as well, so you have to consider how taxes can vary from community to community when building software.

[syniqal]

They just shouldn't have dropped the rate. It'll only have to go back up by more in 2010 to make up for the loss they've made, and that will make people even more pissed off than they currently are.

[metamoof]

Maybe, sorta, somewhat.

The government is trying to make the inflation figures looks good at the end of the year. It also fears there will be some deflation next year (falling house prices are a good indicator of this). By lowering tax now and raising it next year, it makes inflation look less worrying now, and deflation look better next year.

It's a financial sleight of hand. It might just work, too.

You never know, they may actually realise that there are all sorts of inefficiencies both in the civil service and especially in the external conslutancy companies they're hiring to do things, and manage to cut some spending. Also, it appears Morocco has an epidemic of flying halouf, as nobody is allowed to eat them, so they've not been shot down.

I seriously doubt that they'll raise the tax again in December 2009. They'll suddenly declare a change of heart, see that the measure is working so well that they'll keep it down for "another year". Just in time to kick off their election campaign for May 2010.

Cynical? Moi?

[syniqal]

Well, quite. Programmers are like politicians: Most of the ones that aren't bad are untrustworthy. :p