This type of tax-code-manipulation must certainly have been happening since the dawn of time. That, or it was written to confuse the public on purpose.
Finding, reading, learning and understanding the tax code is no mean feat for a layman that was told nothing of it in school (none of us Canadians were taught taxes in public school). And this is coming from a relatively smart person who willingly reads cryptography papers and learns new programming languages for fun.
How much more difficult does TurboTax propose that the IRS make filing? Should we get individually filed returns notarized by our deceased relatives as well?
It usually takes me about 12-24 straight hours of work, and this is for a simple sole-proprietorship that just tallies up income and deducts expenses.
I manage to get it done properly and on time every year, but realizing so many schortcuts along the way that "they" could be making for us yet fail to year after year... it's really quite infuriating.
That, and the fact that I have to do the work to figure out how much I owe them. :/
I am proud to have completed my taxes myself and will strongly urge everybody I know not to vote for TurboTax with their wallets and why.