From Ohio CPA Dana Stahl:

Mr Guru – I found this article from 3 years ago by Dr Jack Wheeler on the tax code.  Quite observant!

DS

The U.S. tax code is purposefully not designed to maximize economic prosperity. Its express purpose is to maximize politicians’ power – power to extort contributions as protection money, and power to make people dependent on government subsidies, thus gaining the vote of those so dependent.

 

From a reader:

Subject: You are so right.

On April 1 you wrote this in response to a question:

“Our tax system is such a convoluted fiasco that anyone grounded in serious logical thought processes (doctors, rocket scientists, et al) will have their brains fry trying to make sense of it.”

I just wanted to say how true that is. When I was newly married, my wife and I tried to do our taxes. We didn’t have much and though it should be simple enough, after all, we both have Masters degrees so we’re fairly intelligent people.

After we each made several efforts and each time came up with different numbers, we decided it was worth paying a tax preparer to save our marriage.

My reply:

That was a smart move, to use a professional tax preparer.

Remember what Albert Einstein said many decades ago, when it was a piece of cake compared to the insane mess it has morphed into since his time.

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

“This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.”

Thanks for writing.

Kerry Kerstetter