Business of Life

The Tax Preparation Industry

One blogger Jeff Cornwall estimates its a $5 billion industry for the preparation of individual tax returns alone. If you add corporate tax work, compliance and audits. Why would this industry want easier, simpler taxes?

The tax industry is quite duplicitous with the source of all of their business: the government. Whenever “tax reform” or “tax simplification” legislation is proposed, hold on to your wallets. Most of this legislation is written by the very professions, accountants and lawyers, who run the tax industry. Tax law is purposely vague. Audits, and the tax law they create through IRS court cases, creates billions of dollars more for this industry. We pay this industry to create new tax law by defending us when faced with audits that are the result of ambiguous tax code they helped to draft.

Having worked in government, I appreciate how "vagueness" in laws is often deliberate.