Why does the US government insist on being so cryptic on tax forms?!?

Question

The instructions on various tax forms seem to only be intelligible to accountants! Is there a reason why they just can't put everything into layman's terms?

Answer 1

Have you ever gotten a strait answer from a politician? For some reason they were given the authority to write tax laws (with much help from special interest groups) I wish that there were an answer to this.

But until true tax reform takes place, I guess I can consider my job safe.

Answer 2

Because the law is so complex. Some years ago, I converted an IRA to a Roth IRA; the instructions were so complex that to this day I am not sure that I paid the correct taxes. I am an expert at mathematics, and have a genius IQ, and if I can't do it, how the devil is the average taxpayer supposed to manage? I guess that's what keeps H & R Block in business.

Answer 3

It's complicated enough even when they talk in precise technical terms. The instructions would look like "War and Peace" if they tried to fully explain everything in layman's terms.

If your income for the year is less than around $40,000, look for a VITA or TCE site near you - see irs.gov for more info. There, trained volunteers will do your taxes at no charge.

Answer 4

There is a very simple answer to your question: Because the less you are able to do on your own, the more reliant you become on the government. And the less reliant you become on the government, the less powerful the government becomes. And without power, the government ceases to exist.

Besides, some people who don't have a life live for bureaucracy and red tape ;-)

Answer 5

Our US tax code is something like tens of thousands of pages, enough to fill a normal bedroom floor to ceiling.

The government barely knows what their rules mean. So it's terribly difficult to tell others what they mean.