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Comment by sorenn111 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree somewhat. US news might laugh about it on morning news coverage. But is it that trivial and a laughing matter? I get it, typos are funny and no one dies. But "nobody died" isn't a valid excuse for mistakes on filing for taxes or legal contracts. Errors do matter, even if no one dies. not to overblow the issue, but governmental trust may require error avoidance for many people.

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FWIW, my reading of the article is that the "nobody died" comment was not made for fun or political points or to deflect blame, but to console the printers responsible who were beating themselves up about their error.

Taxes and contracts can a big impact on the people they affect, though. A typo on a bank note has no direct effect on any users. It's an aesthetic problem, not a functional one.

Really? Isn't it going to throw a lot of false positives when people try to spend them and the cashier thinks that the misspelling means it's counterfeit?

46 million bills were in circulation for 8 months before the first person even noticed the typo, so probably not, no.

I've been a cashier, and trust me, we had more important things to do than examine bills with a magnifying glass looking for spelling errors. If a bill seemed suspicious at a quick glance, I swiped it with the counterfeit detector pen, and if it came out fine, I shrugged and put it in the register.

You really think any cashier is going to read the microtext on every bill they get? You practically need a magnifying glass just to see the typo. It's an absolute non-issue no matter what way you spin it.

Did it though? It's been in circulation for years.

I thought the version with the typo was recent?

Years is probably an over statement on my part. A second read indicates probably a year and half.

An error on legal contract is very different from a typo on something that doesn't matter as it doesn't affect functionality at all.

> But "nobody died" isn't a valid excuse for mistakes on filing for taxes or legal contracts.

I have had a lot of mistakes filing my taxes (Spain) when I was working as a contractor. You pay a small fine (100€ for a yearly report) and move on.

You will be prosecuted if you lied in your taxes. But, mistakes happen all the time and its not big deal.

Do you have to pay backtaxes or is it just $100 and move on?

Yes. I have to pay the taxes. The 100 is a fine for doing it wrong and I guess pay for the extra time that they need to spend.

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