I have to disagree on the simple aspect. It feels like they've been designed by someone who feels American tax payers are too stupid to understand the tax syste

I have to disagree on the simple aspect. It feels like they've been designed by someone who feels American tax payers are too stupid to understand the tax system and are only capable of following simple instructions like an eight-year old. Because of my immigration status I paid an accountant to prepare my forms and was a little surprised to find out I owed the IRS. I tried to work backwards to figure out why but this was all but impossible. Few of the values are labelled and all are interdependent on each other. To figure out what a single value I had to work backwards through multiple branches until I reached the root input. I'm convinced the forms were designed by writing someone in the IRS taking the code for their tax calculators, removing the identifiers and converting it into English text. I have no idea what each variable represents so am unable to be sure the totals are correct. I got the impression that an error early in the process could easily carry through without me noticing. The whole process is opaque and doesn't make me feel like I can trust the IRS or the process to produce an accurate result. By contrast the Australian eTax application asks me a series of yes/no questions, used that to calculate my deductions and income and showed breakdowns for each. For anything non-standard they ask you to use online calculators and provide or retain your documentation. The UK system was even easier and seemed to be calculated based on data supplied directly by employers. My wife was able to get a tax return without submitting any paperwork (there may have been a single form, I can't really remember).