Lol, I thought I was the only one who was bothered by this.

Yes. And while I understand why you (as the owner of a business with receipts in excess of $1m) might choose to retain an accountant.

But you misunderstand my point. I am presupposing, based on the cartoon which I referenced, that there is a large segment of the population which files their own taxes, or would do so were it not perceived to be "complex." And my point is that if I, as a 1099'er, have a tax return package which is extremely simple and straightforward to prepare, then an "ordinary" person with a W-2 should be able to do it in their sleep. You don't even have to know anything about the atmosphere of Jupiter.



Given that it did this year's return on a rainy Saturday while sipping rum & cokes in my pajamas, I'd have to say "none." As in "If I hadn't been preparing my tax return, I'd have been doing something unproductive with that time such as playing videogames."

Also, see above, wherein we do not question whether or not it is a productive use of time for an individual (or family) to prepare their own return, but rather whether having elected to do so, said task is difficult relative to computing the atmospheric properties of various celestial bodies.


I just don't find it all that taxing, if you'll excuse the pun. The instruction booklets for the various forms are all written in fairly clear and straightforward language, and it just seems very intuitive.

Obviously I don't have employees or bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, so my return is probably simpler than yours, however the majority of Americans (those with W-2s) have returns which are far simpler again than mine.

No arguments there. It's tangential to the point I was making, but I don't disagree.


Nope. Right up there with mis-use of the apostrophe and the various retconned explanations of how performance on the Kessel Run is measured.

Esquire Horny, you dont need to know tax law to do a shed c. Or llc.

Unless you have some wierdo business that has lobby-generate incentives and shelters.

Redo the poll with more options above 150k. Lets see how many real one percenters there are here.

It is true that the actual filling out the forms and doing the math is pretty simple stuff - if you are aware and a fairly conscientious records-keeper. Alas, a lot of(maybe most) people are not good about filing away all those pesky forms that they get in the mail, so that when it comes to buying/selling of stocks or other property, there might be gaps. And since a lot of us put doing taxes off until the 11th hour, there can be a sudden stress level spike.
And there are a few regular-folks things like HSA's for which the instructions are ambiguous, at best.

Take, for example,"qualified dividends." If you have a portion of a stock dividend that is "qualified," that portion is taxed at a lower rate than normal income - the unqualified portion is taxed as normal income. However, qualification tax rate is other-income dependent. So, if you're a good investor with a lot of interest income but precious little other income, and you are in the 10-15% income bracket, you pay a 0% tax on the qualified dividends.

However, if you'd been doing this a long time, you might not have checked for tax-code changes - and the 0% thing is a change for 2008-2012, so you would have paid regular income rates on tax-free money. The IRS doesn't feel compelled to tell you that you've overpaid. This happened to my FIL, who is otherwise a pretty smart guy.

Maybe not the best example, but I get why people get weird about doing their taxes.

I got audited last year because, obviously, I must be evil.

I passed the audit. I've got records out the wazoo.

Royal PITA. We're talking weeks.

What an efficient way to fund government. I know we can do better.

Grrrrr . . . .