Time is money for the operators, whose pay can be bolstered by $30 to $50 each biweekly paycheck for good performance (speed and accuracy) as measured by the computer. There isn`t much talking among the operators, and supervisors are reluctant to interrupt them for interviews so as not to hurt their ratings. They are intent on moving as fast as possible, averaging 28 Form 1040`s an hour, or 63.5 Form 1040A`s, or 85.4 Form 1040EZ`s.
”It`s what I would call an assembly-line kind of job,” says Ben Ray, 26, who started work in data conversion in 1979 and met his wife, Mary, on the night shift. ”We get the tax forms, process them, finish the work we`re doing, and get some more tax forms and process them.
”When I`m sitting there, I do this,” Ray says, demonstrating a roll of the head, ”and I stretch and I move my fingers around. It just has to be done. And the operators are allowed to get up and go to the restroom when they want to or if they need to stretch; there`s no problem with that.” Except, of course, they lose time and money.
Some of them wear headphones connected to personal stereos. Cheryl Wood, 37, who has been transcribing data for nine years and who just became a manager of 24 other operators, listens mostly to country music. She found, however, that a commercial with an unusual beat ”would throw me off my rhythm. A lot of times people ask me what I`m listening to, and I couldn`t tell them.”
There are two 15-minute coffee breaks a day, but no food or drink is allowed near the terminals. ”We used to allow them to have cups if they had a lid on them, but when a cup of hot chocolate was spilled on one of our brand new keyboards, I said that`s it. It`s devastating to the equipment,” says Slaughter.
With the data entered, it`s up to the big brain, the Sperry-Univac 1184, actually four huge mainframe computers in one, to crunch the numbers. ”This is where all the math verification takes place,” says Jim Neville, chief of the computer service and accounting division.
Also newly installed, the big brain ”is not going as well in any of our centers as we`d like to have it go,” says Akright. The problem is in the complex software–the instructions that tell the computer how to operate–he says, and the bugs are gradually being worked out. The result is that the centers are behind in their work and refunds have been taking a couple of weeks longer than before to process.
Data processing is not a quiet affair. The system roars 24 hours a day, 364 days a year, with only Christmas off. The roar comes not from the actual processing going on inside the long rows of sleek, gray cabinets but from the environmental systems designed to keep the computers at a constant temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of 45 percent.
The entire service center is security conscious. Everyone wears an ID badge, only certain people have passwords to sign on to certain computer systems and the computer itself reports on who is calling up what information to make sure that even management doesn`t go around looking up their own or a friend`s tax return. Even executives can`t enter certain secure areas without signing in and getting a different ID badge. ”You can be fired, sued or jailed for making unauthorized disclosure of tax information,” new employees are warned on a training video tape. ”Don`t talk about anybody`s tax return.”
The computer areas are the heart of the entire operation and the most secure, and Neville has to punch in a code on a panel next to the door to gain access. In another secure room sit 38,000 reels of computer tapes on which are stored the entire data from returns processed in the current year.
”Good tape” generated by the computer goes out daily to the service`s National Computer Center (NCC) in Martinsburg, W. Va., where the information is posted in the country`s master file and kept there indefinitely. At the IRS every taxpayer gets a form of immortality.
Tapes sent by the NCC to regional disbursing centers of the Treasury Department generate refund checks. But letters explaining why the checks may be more or less than the taxpayer requested are generated by the computers back at the service centers and are mailed separately. Refunds have to be mailed within 45 days after April 15 or the IRS pays taxpayers interest–13 percent this year. Last year, when the interest rate was 11 percent, the IRS paid more than $15.9 million in interest to individual taxpayers for late refunds processed through Kansas City.
”Bad tape” spit out from the big Kansas City computer is looped back to the Error Resolution System (ERS) of the document perfection branch, where the hunt begins for the problem. A full 25 percent of the returns involve some type of error. Referring back to the actual returns, operators averaging 25 corrections an hour check the information to see if it was correctly marked in code and then edit and properly put it into the system in data entry.
Taxpayer errors–bad arithmetic, wrong tax computation–can often be corrected on the spot, and the computer is instructed to compose a letter explaining the changes. ”It`s just making the return processable. We`re not auditing it,” says Dunn.
About 350,000 returns sit around the ERS Control Area for five days, easily available for reference, until the problems are resolved. That`s about it as far as the paper version of the tax returns go. At the time they were opened in receipt and control, the returns were stamped with a document location number (DLN) and batched into bundles of 100 in upright gray plastic trays. The batch trays are stacked on carts for movement from section to section. The carts appear to be haphazardly standing between departments or in aisles, but every day a computer punch card attached to each batch cart is run through the computer for inventory control. The computer also checks that 100 returns have been accounted for in each batch. If not, they are in BOOB
(Blocks out of Balance, remember?) and the errant return is tracked down.
That`s not to say that nothing ever gets lost. If a return somehow lands in the wrong tray, ”It would be very difficult to locate that,” says B. Lee Wilson, chief of the taxpayer`s relations branch, which is supposed to keep track of returns. So the IRS may have to write the taxpayer asking for a photocopy of the return. They keep no figures for how often that happens.
As the processing continues electronically, the paper returns and all of their attached schedules and W2 forms become, for the most part, superfluous, and they are sent off to a warehouse a half-mile away in the government complex, where they are stored for up to three months in case they are needed. After that, they move to another warehouse in the complex operated by the National Archives and Records Center. Individual returns are kept for seven years. All others have been kept since the modern income tax started in 1913 with ratification of the 16th Amendment.
(This is the end of part 3 of 4 parts.)
