Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Death And Praxis
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Michael points out that it's not that doing taxes is time-consuming, it's that doing them optimally is time-consuming. After all, in many cases you could just do the EZ or the A (abbreviated) form and take standard deductions and so on, but only if you follow many branching paths do you find the set of forms and numbers that give the least money to the government. (It occurs to me that a government-trusting liberal might enjoy knowing she was giving more money to the government than is its due, but I am not that government-trusting liberal.) Anyhow, following these branching paths is like Reading Code is Like Reading Talmud.
