Listening to Rachel Maddow last night talk about how H&R Block and Intuit and other companies have a stranglehold on the tax preparation packages, it became clear that this is another thing in the US heavily influenced by lobbying efforts. The Internal Revenue Service could have years ago made tax filing much simpler, because they already have much of the information we are forced to document each year. They could just send out a statement saying "do these numbers look right?" since they already have the information we received on W-2 and 1099 forms.

TurboTax and H&R Block have spent years making Tax Day miserable. This topic has come up annually; I can't find the Maddow essay on video from last night, but an essay from last year by her colleague Hayes Brown says pretty much the same thing.

So other countries don't have to do the paper shuffle every year? I don't use a tax preparation package, I do the math then file using Free Fillable Forms (via the IRS). But it appears it could be a lot easier. Now who is going to face down the big companies that own the tax software?