Normal humans can do their own taxes in a few minutes if they qualify for the 1040EZ. Intuit has a mobile app called SnapTax where you take a photo of your W2 and answer a few questions. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_17101221

That's nice for people who qualify for 1040EZ.

The problem with doing that from the government perspective is that it takes away a lot of its power to shape behavior.

That'd just be terrible, wouldn't it?

While my knee-jerk response is to agree with you, there are some cases where we want the government to shape behavior. The best example I can think of for this is gas taxes---there's a cost to driving (road maintenance, traffic lights/signage) that you wouldn't really pay for unless it were through taxes.

You could point out that that's a sales tax and thus not particularly applicable to the discussion at hand, and I'd agree, but the idea of making people pay for negative externalities is a good one.

With an income tax? Rather than a use tax?

Is the rate at which tax codes are becoming more complex exceeding Moore's law?

But tax expenditures are the only way for anti-government types in government to spend money! ;-)

The complexity doesn't come from the simple cases: it comes from the cases that are legitimately complex. Carried interest, investment gains, charitable contributions, foreign income, corporate debt and so forth aren't reducible to a simple equation. For the vast majority of Americans taxes are simple: for many of the rest, they will never be simple unless they are abolished all together.

Carried (really, any) interest: income. Investment gains: income. Charitable contributions: good for you. Foreign income, less taxes paid upon repatriation: income. House purchase: congratulations.

The tax code is complex because it gives the government power over us, because there is a huge industry built around it and because rich people can use it to their advantage.

Agreed except for foreign income: we have treaties with most countries to avoid double taxation: If I've paid taxes to Turkey for money earned in Turkey, why do I pay it again in the US?

Now, things get more complicated with foreign investments. If you've paid taxes on the investment in Ireland, you've likely paid less than you would in the US -- so that doesn't quite work. That's where things get complicated.

should all work like multi-state commuter taxes--i live in NJ, work in NY, and my NY tax is credited against my NJ liability (leaving no liability to NJ, as NY rates are higher (at least with the extra NYC tax thrown in)). tax treaties (as exist between many states) just make the revenue sharing easier from the governments' point of view.

This "but taxes are complicated" counter-argument is a canard.

Under a verification-based tax system, the option would always remain available to do things the hard way (as it is today).

There are plenty of good ideas on how to do this, for example: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/how-to-really-s...

Unfortunately, the political will to implement these ideas is almost entirely lacking.

Also, while most people claim to object to tax credits to special interests in principle, in reality they only object to tax credits that other people enjoy.

While were at it, why not roll all the taxes into one rate and have the IRS with their accountants divvy it up?