How could you possibly build something this stupid?
Out gereric VAT rate changed to 25,5% about a year go. It’s been a whole number since current implementation was introduced in 1994. There was quite a few big systems running on accounting, cash registers, payment processors and whatever which couldn’t store decimals on VAT value. And obviously all the official information never stated that VAT couldn’t have decimals at some point, it just never had them before and thus vendors have just stored it as an plain integer and quite a lot of systems needed upgrade or on some cases full replacement.
So, apparently it’s pretty easy to build something that stupid.
I agree with division/multiplication issue. Or maybe just simply an assumption that VAT is always there and sanity checks on the systems just won’t allow 0 (or negative number) as a tax percentage.
I meant that in general even ‘official’ systems have stupid bugs or practices just because things have been in a certain way for long time. Years ago I wrote a small invoicing program which had obviously manage VAT and it would’ve been a simple mistake to assume that VAT (or any tax percentage) is just a whole number since that’s what I’ve ever seen before. That particular piece of software is well obsolete now, but that would’ve managed the decimals since it handled all the numbers in the same way just to keep things simple and monetary values obviously need decimals. However, without any verification it wouldn’t been a crazy assumption to store tax percentages as a two digit integer everywhere.
Out gereric VAT rate changed to 25,5% about a year go. It’s been a whole number since current implementation was introduced in 1994. There was quite a few big systems running on accounting, cash registers, payment processors and whatever which couldn’t store decimals on VAT value. And obviously all the official information never stated that VAT couldn’t have decimals at some point, it just never had them before and thus vendors have just stored it as an plain integer and quite a lot of systems needed upgrade or on some cases full replacement.
So, apparently it’s pretty easy to build something that stupid.
That I at least sort of understand, but 1 being easier to support than 0? Neighbour comment might be onto something with the division thing.
I agree with division/multiplication issue. Or maybe just simply an assumption that VAT is always there and sanity checks on the systems just won’t allow 0 (or negative number) as a tax percentage.
I meant that in general even ‘official’ systems have stupid bugs or practices just because things have been in a certain way for long time. Years ago I wrote a small invoicing program which had obviously manage VAT and it would’ve been a simple mistake to assume that VAT (or any tax percentage) is just a whole number since that’s what I’ve ever seen before. That particular piece of software is well obsolete now, but that would’ve managed the decimals since it handled all the numbers in the same way just to keep things simple and monetary values obviously need decimals. However, without any verification it wouldn’t been a crazy assumption to store tax percentages as a two digit integer everywhere.