VAT Hardcoding
One of the challenges of being a programmer/software designer/software architect is deciding at what point things are hard wired into a program, and at what point you make them soft.
Hard wiring is cheap, soft isn’t. Hard means directly writing a value into your code while soft means having the value stored into a database with a whole load of maintenance screens to support it.
The decision on what goes where is generally based on historical changes. So, I doubt that anyone has the patterns for validating UK postcodes defined “soft”. They haven’t changed in a very long time, and are unlikely to in future.
Which brings us on to the recent change in the rate of VAT from 17.5% to 15%. Mass Media Design raises an interesting point:-
Back in the 1990s, ecommerce didn’t really exist and so many of the ecommerce systems that have grown up in that time have had the rate of VAT hard coded into them at 17.5%. Many companies will be realising that their ecommerce system cannot be updated without the intervention of a programmer (and his hourly rate!).
Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem but the fact that the rate change comes into effect on the 1st December means that there is likely to be a frantic rush to get these systems working properly in time.
Right. The last time the VAT rate changed was in 1991. To the majority of developers, this is something they may have considered as a static value, not a flexible value.
The problem is also slightly more complicated than simply changing the rate. If you’re running a 24 hour e-commerce site, you’ve got to build in that as of 31st Nov, your rate is 17.5% and at 1 minute past midnight on the 1st Dec, your rate is 15%.
The government has made a right screw up over this change in this regard. The likes of Amazon won’t have a problem. Even if they hard coded the change, they’ve got development teams that can jump all over this and get it sorted. To small e-commerce retailers, they don’t have this. They have 3 working days to get everything changed on their systems to cope with this.
Thankfully, it’s quite a small change in terms of coding, so the actual fix is small.
Just out of interest… is this going to be a quiet shopping weekend as people wait to see what the prices become after Monday?
RSS
I don’t think any retailers will pass changes on, at least not straight away after the weekend. Stupid people might be fooled and stay at home, meaning a nice quiet triip to the shops for the rest of us.
On the hardcoding point, it will be interesting to see if any news stories break of retailers charging 17.5 still because of systems. Such stories would not necessarily be harmful to the retailer, but will be to the government.
Hi Mike,
If you Google “vat hardcoding”, there’s at least one forum where developers have discussed this, and it does seem to have happened.
I’m not suggestng that VAT rate hardcoding is a good practise, just that i do see why people may have done it.
I honestly hadn’t thought about this, but in coding projects back as far as university we always hardcoded VAT….. Whoops!
I think it will be quiet, our Microwave broke last week and we finally dashed it back to Woolworths last night (not a bad thing given how much trouble they appear to be in!) and took the cash refund option…..
My wife promptly declared she could live without a microwave until the vat went down!
Shame petrol won’t come down!!!!!
From what I hear, many people are just giving at 2.5% discount at the checkout stage, especially since the rate change is temporary (until the next one!).
Gregor,
But it’s still got to be quoted at current rate then switched. The 2.5% discount is more of a promotion. So, anyone doing an invoice after next monday better be ready.
Other than the fact that I now have top spot for “VAT Hardcoding”, there’s quite a lot of posts on forums saying that they’ve got to change systems.