When the IRS 'likes' your Facebook update

But I'm not clear why it's unsettling to use social networking posts—that is, public broadcast publishing by individuals—as a source of information. It's as legitimate as any other.

There is no way I could imagine social network posts would be used as the sole or even as a major indicator for an audit. If it was, the audit success rate would be terrible, anyway.

Audits are randomly chosen out of several pools (i.e., corporations, very wealthy individuals, the self-employed, business-owners, every else, etc.) with heavy emphasis on high-fraud pools such as the self-employed. These pools are generated based on self-reported information (the much vaunted/feared comparative reporting analysis system is years from implementation). Due to high fraud levels, some pools (i.e., the self-employed pool) have higher likelihoods of audits but from the standpoint of the taxpayer, the increased risk is isn't meaningfully worse.

Once you understand it, you'll come to admire the brilliance of the whole thing.

At that point, explain it to the rest of us.

But I would argue that the failure of tax reform is not so simple. Major tax reform is a massive, massive legislative undertaking. And doing so redefines many of the basic American incentives. Having your say in tax reform is the equivalent of leaving your mark on the next 20-30 years of American society.

Suffice to say, the massive polarization of our Legislature, combined with the hyper-efficacy of Senate obstruction, and finished off with the fact that tax reform is hard to campaign on means that there is no real incentive for our legislators to reform. But sure, a token campaign contribution making up a miniscule fraction of total donations doesn't hurt...

No more information than what's already public.

The thing is, most of the tax code doesn't apply to everyday citizen. The really complicated stuff only applies to a certain number and I'm sure they have well paid people doing their best to avoid those sections.

The easy way to get people riled up about taxes? Remove withholding from paychecks and force people to write that big check every April. Then you'll get an uproar since most people have no idea how much in taxes they pay. But that's likely not the point you're trying to make.

Getting angry about an over-complicated and taking productive action to change it takes effort. Lots of it, sustained over time in an organized and intelligent way. But people generally aren't passionate about taxes. They're passionate about hobbies, their families, friends, major life goals, and so on. Taxes are just an obstacle to move past.

When you overcomplicate the tax code, you create a huge market for companies willing to take on that burden for you, at a price. Because they operate at scale, they achieve efficiencies that no individual or small group can hope to achieve. Doing peoples' taxes is much more palatable when you're getting paid to do so. Meanwhile, John and Jane Smith can go back to what they're really passionate about.

For a price.

As a litmus test for a country's tax code, I propose: if a typical high school graduate with access to all necessary information cannot do his or her federal/national taxes in an afternoon, your country's tax code is too complicated.

The rules shouldn't be so convoluted that we have to pay private companies to untangle the mess for us. The government had a choice in the matter; they could have gone with simplicity instead of the Gordion knot. I guess I'm not surprised, since we're forced to deal with their system. We can't vote with our dollars, only votes at the ballot box, and last time I checked, simplifying the tax code wasn't on the agenda.