> The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them This basic idea seem pate

> The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them This basic idea seem patently ridiculous to me. I've more-or-less made a career of doing math and managing complicated procedures, yet still, I find the current tax prep process to be such a mind-numbing grind that, by the time we get to the point where I've calculated how much tax I actually owe, I've long since quit caring to calculate what percentage of my income that is. By that point, the only number I care to see is how much I owe or will be refunded, so that I can just be done with the whole mess. It's hard to imagine that someone who's got a more typical level of comfort with math is going to be any more prepared to do that one extra calculation. If the GOP really wanted me to be aware of how much tax I'm paying, they'd reduce the whole process to a simple report they send me, with everything already calculated, that has "your calculated income tax in dollars" and "your calculated income tax as a % of net income" listed in big bold print at the very top. It seems much more parsimonious to me to suppose that the logic is, "If we make income tax a hateful process, people will come to hate income tax." (Which, incidentally, is a line of reasoning that would play very well to the position of those who want to get rid of progressive taxation. Most other forms of tax we have in the USA are either flat or regressive.)