Smack of Reality: Why Are Taxes so Complex to File?

I really do not understand why our taxes are so complex to file. I think that it is ridiculous.

I receive Social Security disability and, for the first year, I had to file income taxes. The income was only $971 and I would have thought that the tax would have been easy and only take a few minutes to complete and file.

I was really wrong. It has taken me several hours to figure out which forms and which deductions to take. The actual tax is simple but to wade through all the tax laws and forms, just to see what I need to file, is insane. I had to file about six forms. Six forms! For $971 I needed six different forms. That is a joke and waste of several trees.

I had to file one form and two schedules for my federal income tax and another form and two schedules for my state tax. It took me a few websites and phone calls to figure out that I did not have to pay city tax or it would have meant another few pages.

At first, I did the federal tax forms myself and it turns out that I owe $137 in federal taxes. Several sources and taxpayers told me that this is the right amount of tax for $971. On a whim, I decided to go and try turbo tax, which is one of the premiere websites for filing taxes.

At first, the site said that I owed $137, which is when I figure it out myself. A few steps later, I find out that I am eligible for an earned income tax credit, which reduced my tax liability to $66 - a whole lot more reasonable considering the low income amount. It also said that my state tax would be $0 because of another deduction that the site found.

Everything went fine until I went to complete the file. It turns out that the specific form of income that I have is not covered by TurboTax's free e-file service and it would cost me over $65 to complete my tax filing. Yeah, right! It is almost as much as the tax that I owe.

The state tax caused problems too. In my state, you can file state taxes over the phone or online. The problem is that you need a pin number and the only way to get it is to Mail or fax your signature to the state revenue office. This sounded good and I went to fax it but then I realized that my particular phone service does not enable me to send faxes to long-distance phone numbers. It is a complicated process because my fax program does not allow me to enter the calling card type info for a long distance call. If it were a local, I wouldn't need to worry about it. Without the fax option, I would have to snail mail the form and it would take forever for the process to be completed.

A few free sites later, I found sites that gave me the same results as TurboTax with free e-filing. But my problem of taxes was not over yet.

The first site that actually worked went well until I got to the state tax. The website said that they could file my federal taxes but not my state taxes. They also let me use bank withdrawal for the federal taxes, so I went ahead and did it.

Now, the problem of my state taxes was still there. I went to another site that guaranteed my state tax would be free to file. Even though I do not have to pay state taxes after the deduction, they still want me to file. So, I filled out all of the steps and it turns out that this site only files federal or federal and state taxes at the same time with no option to only do the state tax. Argh!

The problem was resolved, in a way (at least I hope so), because of the fact that the second website only files those taxes but does not give a direct payment option like the first website. With this website, I would have to make my payment to the IRS myself using other methods. So, what I did was to let the website file both my federal and state taxes. They will file the taxes and I won't have to worry about the website, the IRS and having the first website also pay them.

Basically, I filed my federal taxes twice but only paid them once. I do not think that this will be much of a problem. If it is, I will fix it later.

Phew! All of this nonsense just to pay $66 in taxes. Imagine if I had to pay thousands in taxes!

This brings me back to my original question. Why is our tax system so insanely complicated? What is wrong with a flat tax form? Just answer a few questions and multiply your income by one simple tax rate to get your income tax refund or liability. Simple, isn't it?

Instead, our tax system seems like something that Lewis Carroll would make Alice do in Alice in Wonderland! It is crazy. There are hundreds of tax forms for every purpose that you can think of with just as many schedules. Our tax forms are pages long with overly complicated jargon and so any formulas that Einstein would get a headache.

I think that our tax system is this complicated as a way for more government workers to get jobs. I also think that the government has special connections with tax filing services, like TurboTax or H&R Block. Everyone gets more jobs and all of these companies receive millions of dollars every year to file our taxes. It seems like a big scam to me!

Anything other than a simple tax return, like mine should have been, requires a person with an accounting degree to decipher. This kind of makes the rest of us have a great disadvantage. We can't skim through all the red tape and find the best combination of legitimate deductions because that is not our field. Instead, we must rely on the expertise of tax experts who are getting paid big bucks.

How can our tax system be fair when there are thousands of different combinations of deductions that we can use but might not know of? This means that, if you do not know the specific combination of deductions and loopholes, you will miss out on possibly thousands of dollars in taxes that you are refunded or overpay.

A fair tax system would make sure that no mistakes can be made and everyone would get the same percentage of compensation or taxes all the time. Everyone would know exactly what to do in fewer steps and we wouldn't need to pay big bucks to experts just to make sure that we get a fair deal.