Agreed. Living in a functioning society, in the "western" world, is pretty nice and I'm happy to pay for it. But, having to spend a day or more every March, o

Agreed. Living in a functioning society, in the "western" world, is pretty nice and I'm happy to pay for it. But, having to spend a day or more every March, or pay a CPA a few hundred dollars, is infuriating. My taxes aren't that complicated - two upper middle class salaries, a normal (for dense suburb) mortgage, and no kid at home any more (he flew the coop 3 years ago). Outside of the years we were impacted by AMT (a whole other rant), the IRS knows exactly what we earn, what we've paid to date, and determining our mortgage obligation should be trivial (submission from bank to IRS or similar). They should just mail me an index card that says "your good!" or "you still owe $1200" or similar and that's that.