Well…with it being tax day, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the reason why taxes are so complicated. In many countries around the world the state sends out a form with all of your information already entered into it and all you have to do is sign it…with the record keeping and computer capacity that has made life easier everywhere but here, you would think the US would be able to do that, too…but, no….not when you have the tax preparation industry protecting the 15 billion dollars they make every year doing taxes for individuals. The whole thing tracks back to 1998 when congress ordered the IRS to build a “return free system” for people who have relatively simple returns…but, even before the rules were tried, the tax prep industry started throwing money at legislators trying to get the act rescinded and they have spent almost 30 million dollars trying to keep the tax code as complicated as possible to ensure their profits. It is not like these guys know what they are doing, either…a study done buy the GAO found that 90% of the returns done by “professional” preparers had errors in them….something that is not better than people doing it themselves. I am just so tired of business buying themselves profits that come from the hard work of normal folks just because they can…and I am tired of congress not doing their job to protect US citizens from this kind of crap….geez…