Thanks for Nothing

The Internal Revenue Service offers advice to help taxpayers complete their returns. But the quality of their advice is a bit less than perfect. In the most recent year the error rate was 41%. Gee, if I ask the IRS for help I have an almost 50% chance of not getting good advice. Even in their best year, almost a third of their advice is inaccurate.

The explanation of that very high rate is pretty simple. It is not that the IRS people need more training. It is simply that the tax code itself is riddled with complexities that almost no one, even an IRS employee trained to explain it, can understand it.