Do you think maybe it [the IRS.GOV web site] might be a step toward not having to use tax preparers?

I think the IRS would love to be able to process the 95% of the tax returns that are (or should be) simple enough to do over the phone.  They used to actually have a 'phone in your tax return' option for people just starting out and really a lot of people could still do that.

The IRS has been working for years towards creating a system where most people would not have to use tax preparers. 

BUT

Two things work against it.  First is that everyone wants their deduction, their tax credit, their piece of the money pie back.  The ones with a few bucks push very hard on their congress reps to get some small piece of tax rebate or credit pushed through buried in the next tax bill or as an amendment to some important financial bill.  There are hundred of thousands of these little caveats that help one interest group or another making the actual tax documentation into a huge mess that only an expert can really get through.  Or really good software written by an expert.  

The other piece of the puzzle that mitigates against something like a true flat tax is the companies, like Inuit (Turbotax, Quickbooks, et al) that make millions and millions by creating an industry to process complex taxes.  If the complexity were to go away then that part of the company that managed taxes would be bankrupt.  They pay an amazing amount into the political pockets of reps who ensure that the tax code stays complex (while saying how much they regret it being so).  It is a racket.

( Read more... )

Every once in a while I get a book

I'm usually reading two books.  One on Kindle, one in audio usually on Overdrive.  Many of them are forgettable.  I tend towards the mystery and space genre.  Since finding the Literature Map link I've rediscovered a couple of authors and have just decided to read their entire output or at least the series that interest me.

One of the ways I know a lot about the world (other than having travelled it quite a bit) is through the eyes of the local authors when they are writing about other things.  Deon Meyer has written a lot of books all of which are set in South Africa or adjoining countries.  He writes in Afrikaans and so obviously I read the second hand translations.  Rather I listen to them.  This is something much better in audio.

The reader is a guy by the name of Simon Vance and he brings them alive.  Just finished with Thirteen Hours (the second in a series surrounding a detective Benny Griesel but it stands alone).  Written in 2008 it is a freight train of a book that combines the energy of multiple story lines begun and ended in a single 13 hour period (the audio book actually reads in 11.5) with many of the complex socio/political events in South Africa after apartheid.  

This is the best of his books, at least the ones I've read so far, and one of the best of its genres I've ever read.  It is so wonderful to hear a linguist pronounce the various Africaans, Zulu, Corsar, Dutch and German names and words.  And the story is riveting.

Ok, just thought you should know that.