(SPOT.ph) Irony is when you build a system that's supposed to make income-tax filing easier, but it instead made things a little worse. Or much worse, depending on who you ask. The Bureau of Internal Revenue very recently moved to a "paperless" transaction and it's been met with a lot of criticism.
Here's a list of problems that the new online system created:
1. About half of the country doesn't even use the Operating System (OS) required to run the eBIRForms program. It's completely incompatible with Mac.
2. BIR Kim Henares wants you to solve this by going to an Internet Café, which is a brilliant idea for when you're filing out forms which have sensitive, personal, and private information.
3. They also offered to save eBIR forms to people's flashdisks because security risks don't exist! At all!
4. Love Internet Explorer? Of course you do. Everyone uses it, right? That's why the BIR slapped this note on their website: "Best viewed with Internet Explorer versions 6 and up; or Mozilla Firefox 2 and up; or with Netscape versions 6 and up; and with 800x600 or higher resolution." NETSCAPE! Netscape, people!
5. You actually need a printer. And a scanner. And a CD-burner. Because you'll have to go to a Notary Public with a CD containing alphebatically arranged PDFs of your scanned forms (that you originally printed out from their system to show the bank). It's all very confusing.
The worst part? They announced the transition on March 17. The deadline for filing is on April 15. (That's today.)