It's even simpler, really, and a classic and well-researched defect in representative democracy. Any time there is an interest group (which can be one person,

It's even simpler, really, and a classic and well-researched defect in representative democracy. Any time there is an interest group (which can be one person, one corporation, an industry, etc.) that wants something that is highly advantageous to itself and costs a very large number of other people a very small amount of money each, that interest group will always pay a small portion of its benefit to politicians for support, and politicians will always support it. This is because it's not worthwhile for millions of individuals to band together and defeat something that costs each one only a few cents. Literally, the time it takes (whether to make a donation, write a letter, or make whatever other trivial contribution) exceeds the value of shutting down the special interest. Intuit likes income-tax returns and tax laws in general that are complex. But there are hundreds of other special interests, most very narrow, that favor specific bits of the tax code and will lobby to keep them. Collectively, these things cost us trillions of dollars, but individually they are impossible to defeat because no single one is large enough to be worthwhile. This happens in all representative democracies where tax law is set by the legislature. There are ways to avoid it, but there is currently no state that has tried to do so (probably because this problem is extremely profitable for the political industry).