The Individual Master File (IMF) is the system currently used by the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...

(IRS) to store and process

tax A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to regulate and reduce negative externalities. Tax co ...

submissions and used as the main data input to process the IRS's transactions. It is a running record of all of a person's individual tax events including refunds, payments, penalties and tax payer status. It is a batch-driven application that uses VSAM files. Written in

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

and

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...

, the IMF was originally created by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

for the IRS in the 1960s to run with an IBM

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and associated tape storage system. The IMF is frequently identified as a

legacy system Legacy or Legacies may refer to: Arts and entertainment Comics * " Batman: Legacy", a 1996 Batman storyline * '' DC Universe: Legacies'', a comic book series from DC Comics * ''Legacy'', a 1999 quarterly series from Antarctic Press * ''Legacy ...

in need of modernization.

Description

The IMF stores an individual's name,

taxpayer identification number A Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) is an identifying number used for tax purposes in the United States and in other countries under the Common Reporting Standard. In the United States it is also known as a Tax Identification Number (TIN) ...

, address, income, deductions, credits, payments received, refunds issued and taxes dismissed. The IMF stores over 100 million Americans individual taxpayers' data. The IMF application is a system consisting of a series of batch runs, data records and files. The IMF system receives individual tax submissions in electronic format and processes them through a pre-posting phase. It then posts and analyzes the transactions which produces output in the form of Refund Data, Notice Data, Reports and information feeds to other entities and departments.

Age

The IMF system began operation in the 1960s and is still used today, and is considered well overdue for modernization. Portions of the system are programmed in

and others directly in

. In a 2018 report to

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

, the

Government Accountability Office The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the s ...

identified the IMF and other IT systems at the IRS as "facing significant risks due to their reliance on legacy programming languages, outdated hardware, and a shortage of human resources with critical skills". The IMF and other legacy systems have been named as obstacles that prevent the IRS from acting quickly in exigent circumstances. In the weeks following the passage of the

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act, is a $2.2trillion Stimulus (economics), economic stimulus bill passed by the 116th United States Congress, 116th U.S. Congress and signed into law by Presiden ...

, the IRS attempted to rapidly disburse tens of millions of one-time economic stimulus payments, requiring code changes to the IMF and the creation of an associated online interface for taxpayers to view and update their payment information. However, the effort was only partially successful as many taxpayers received the wrong payment amount or were unable to view their payment status. There have also been multiple hardware failures at key times, including one which occurred on 17 April 2018 during the end of tax season.

Replacement

The Customer Account Data Engine (CADE) is intended to replace the IMF system in day-to-day use. Work on the original CADE was begun in 2000 and stopped in 2009. The original CADE is in active use; for instance, in 2009, it was used to process over 40 million tax returns. In 2009, work began on CADE 2, with an initial planned implementation date of 2014 for major functionality. However, CADE 2's major functionality is not expected to be used until 2023 (as of 2021) and the full system is not expected to be implemented until 2030.

References

{{reflist Internal Revenue Service Legacy systems Government databases in the United States

Description

Age

Replacement

See also

References