Few lawmakers file their own tax returns, citing code's complexity

I'm a retired CPA and find it time effective to use TurboTax to prepare our return. There is no way a non-trained individual can keep up with the current tax laws and myriad changes each year. In essence, the individual has to pay a professional at his own expense. This is just an additional tax caused by over-regulation.

Excerpt: Few members of Congress prepare their annual tax returns, instead relying on professional preparers, according to a survey conducted by The Hill.

The lawmakers explained it was the tax code’s complexity that had them turning to accountants for help.

Six out of 10 people paid a professional preparer to file their returns last year, according to the IRS. Just 8 percent didn’t get any help from a tax preparer, software or IRS assistance program.

In January, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said during a C-SPAN interview that he does not file his own taxes in part because he believes the tax code is complex.

At its inception, the tax code was a single, 400-page book about the size of a small-town telephone directory. It now spans over 71,000 pages and commands plenty of shelf space, according to tax publisher CCH. There are 1,909 documents offered on the IRS website that pertain to taxes. There are 174 pages of instructions for form 1040, the two-page form used by individuals to file their returns.

With the additional pages come complexity, and lots of it.

A number of lawmakers said that people turning to outside help to do an essential civic duty shows that it’s time to change the system.

“It’s just unacceptable,” said Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who uses an accountant. “We’ve had, I think, maybe 16,000 changes [in the tax code] since ’86” — the year of the last major tax reform.

“It’s a nightmare for all people,” Voinovich added. “It should be simplified.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) saw Thursday’s tax filing deadline as an occasion to tout the tax reform plan he’s crafted with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). Their proposal would eliminate a slew of exemptions, cut the number of individual income tax brackets to three and allow most taxpayers to submit to the IRS nothing more than a one-page form each year.

“I have a preparer,” Wyden said. “I don’t see, with the kind of reform Sen. Gregg and I are talking about, that people would need preparers that they do now, that they do under today’s system.”

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