The cynic in me says this is deliberate. The only people who can afford to hire someone who knows 1/3 of the tax code (a very good CPA) is the only person who can possibly benefit from this level of abstraction. I'm old enough to remember a time before turbotax and stuff. Of course, I wasn't old enough to do taxes, but I got the pleasure of watching my family suffer through them. You'd get your 50 page tax form in the mail and you would spend the next 3 months going back and forth adding obscure deductions, credits, penalties, etc to get your final number. If your final number didn't match the IRS's final number they'd fine you. The system is absolutely insane. The idea of having to fill out a tax form to submit to a government body who knows everything you do tax-wise (post-9/11 and post-clinton war on drugs made it so the IRS gets access to basically any significant amount of money you have) is nuts. A small improvement to the system reverses the dependency graph - the IRS sends you an itemized form of what you paid and you, at your leisure, can check it for correctness. It is simply nuts that the IRS will penalize you for messing up on a form which they themselves have the entire body of knowledge needed to complete properly for you. The current US tax system is set up to benefit the ultra rich through massive corporate lobbying to prevent easier solutions (TurboTax/Intuit being the primary offender). Everyone has stake in making sure it is as hard as possible to file your taxes correctly because hundreds of thousands of slimy tax accountant and IRS officer jobs are on the line should they fail. This is the principle problem with the rich. The power of lobbying is so great that the only people who can actually affect change are the rich. The people protesting on the streets are either abjectly poor, middle class, or lower-upper class. The actual people controlling the puppets in congress are the Bezos, Musks, Cooks, Waltons, Gates, etc. The current tax system is a painful reminder of that.
%% I see your points H4M; but even a good , wise + fair tax break can be double trouble for those hiring a ''crooked RE appraiser''..............................................................................................................[Of course i dont know if thier RE appraisers are crooked, its implied in that news, which may, or may not be true],,
%% Good question. Its actually a very big + important difference. I got tax breaks for mortgage interest, some years ago, meaning the gov got less money/power; + banks REALTORS who no doubt lobbied for that, got more also. When the US gov gives NPR[national public radio] millions , its more gov power/control /stupidity/waste. [Actually i listen to NPR some/business some; they dont NEED gov money, they get it mostly from MCD, MSFT foundations ............ ]SEE the BIG difference Sig?? AS far as the US lumber industry promoting Tariffs on cheaper Canadian lumber; i hated that BIG gov nonsense+ it had the intended effect of increasing US/Canadian lumber prices..............................................................................................................
reports, Microsoft didn’t take things lying down... The IRS picked the fight, but Microsoft hit back harder The IRS wanted to use the Microsoft case to crack down on the common practice of tax dodging, so it pulled out all the stops, such as hiring outside firms. But Microsoft responded by rallying other tax dodgers (“Guys, this could happen to you”) to its support -- and soon some battle lines were drawn... In one corner satTeam IRS: A high-powered law firm, which was an unusual move for the IRS that signaled the agency’s seriousness In the other corner satTeam Microsoft: TheUS Chamber of Commerce, which theoretically didn’t want entrepreneurs to fear doing business SeveralBig Tech lobbying groups, which feared the tax man would come after them next Bipartisanmembers of Congress, who feared the IRS’s actions would stifle business So, what happened in the tax matchup of the century? Well, Microsoft pretty much just got away with it Team Microsoft succeeded in changing the law andreducing the IRS’s powersto pursue other corporate tax dodgers. Microsoft may still pay a penalty, since the case isn’t closed. If the fight sounds obscure, here’s why it’s still significant: Corporate tax avoidance has increased sharply in recent years. The percentage of profits that US corporations shifted offshore increased from 4.6% in 1996 to 19% in 2017.