I am not disagreeing with you, just slowly came to realize that the world is not all that logical, nor are well-intentioned people all that good at understandin

I am not disagreeing with you, just slowly came to realize that the world is not all that logical, nor are well-intentioned people all that good at understanding all the consequences. Convenience in some cases may be counter-productive and ends up with unexpected side effects. I do happen to believe that taxes in the US are lower because of the way taxes are collected and that you are forced to "see" exactly what goes where. If it were just a line, sign here, and press a button I would do just that, press a button and submit. This approach may save me a few hours a year, ok, but I also think I would make less effort to look up ways to save taxes and I would simply be less aware of the various mechanisms that are there. For example, I understood long term gains and qualified dividends much better after adding these in (semi-manually) and seeing how it all affects the bottom line. I also understand much better how to do tax loss harvesting and other similar methods.