Who were the Hollywood suits who thought a furry orange troll with Danny DeVito’s voice lecturing people on trees was a winning combination for a family movie? I suppose I’m not really one to talk, as I was suckered by my kids into spending six bucks renting The Lorax last weekend. Having been reintroduced to Dr. Seuss’ works since having children, I have come to the conclusion that his approach primarily consists of substituting lame rhyming for decent writing. I know, look in the mirror. How hard is it to rhyme when one is no longer confined to having to use actual words?

The passage of another mythical hairy fellow through my house over the weekend – no, not my wife’s uncle; the little lagomorpha who leaves baskets of candy for the kids — reminded me that America’s next great holiday is just around the corner: Tax Day. As I followed my tax ritual of dumping several dozen forms on my accountant a couple weeks ago, I started thinking about one of the darker sides of the advent of computing. Would it be possible to have such a monstrosity of a tax code if not for modern computing power? If, with pen and paper, people still had to fill out a 1040 line by line subtracting $1000 times the number of squirrels residing in their backyard from line 218a to determine their taxable income, would they still put up with all of it? I tend to doubt it. In retrospect, one of the major differences between now and 30 years ago that made the Tax Reform Act of 1986 possible is the fact that a Tandy 1000 did not come preloaded with TurboTax.

Another less obvious drain caused by our byzantine tax system — one I think about when I meet one of the many tax attorneys, tax accountants, and other tax professionals in our society — is all the wasted brain power the system consumes. My accountant is a smart guy and if he were not occupied with filling out IRS form 8962 I’d wager he would be able to contribute to society in many fruitful ways. To see the magnitude of the issue, just look at two organizations that focus on managing taxes: The IRS has north of 90,000 workers and H&R Block has about 80,000 employees. These two tax-related entities alone represent 170,000 working persons. How much better off would we be if the talents of these individuals could be applied to something more productive than managing the income tax?