Jacob Sullum: “‘The most serious problem facing U.S. taxpayers is the declining quality of service provided to them by the IRS when they seek to comply with their federal tax-filing and payment obligations,’ says the Taxpayer Advocate Service (‘Your Voice at the IRS’) in its latest annual report to Congress. ‘Even when a taxpayer manages to get through to a telephone assistor with a question, the assistor may not be able to provide an answer.’ That’s because the IRS decided in 2013 that ‘it would answer only what it terms "basic” questions, declaring “more complex” questions that it previously answered “out of scope.”’ In other words, the less likely you are to resolve a tax compliance question on your own the less likely the IRS is to help you. You can, of course, consult a ‘tax professional,’ who makes a living by helping perplexed citizens figure out how much they owe the government. But the very existence of this occupation is an indictment of our Byzantine tax system, which is so complicated that even the IRS is reluctant to answer questions about it – yet it imposes civil and criminal penalties on people who fail to comply with its numerous picayune requirements.“