Privatized tax collectors are bad. Private collectors have every incentive to make collection as difficult as possible so as to cement their position (and profits).<p>A government that employs a tax scheme that is so complicated that it requires private collectors is signalling dysfunction and is presenting an attack surface whereby that government is open to undue influence from the collectors while simultaneously hampering the people's ability to direct the affairs of that government.<p>How much time does a person have to spend to understand and comply with the requirements of the tax scheme? Well, in the US, practically no one knows because they are paying a private collector to figure it out for them. Even when going with a private collector the time I spend at the end of the year is measured in hours. Without the private collector it would likely be more than a dozen hours, and that's just for filling out forms. There is also a significant time cost to maintain and store various documents throughout the year.<p>Now consider that those are the costs if you are already familiar with the scheme. If you aren't already familiar with the scheme, you're pretty much SOL. The government doesn't even notify you that you are required to pay any taxes until you don't and informs you that they are coming after you for penalties. Go check out the IRS's website [1], no where on the landing page is there an obvious explanation of what your responsibilities are. <i>If</i> you manage to make it to the form 1040 instructions[2], you've got a 100+ page PDF to read up on just to learn how to fill out one of the forms. There's also handfuls of other forms and and instructions all over their site, with no comprehensive structure or explanation for.<p>The above scenario is already a nightmare and it doesn't even touch on <i></i>what the actual tax scheme is<i></i>[3], which the IRS doesn't even bother to host, but instead links to the website of a the law school at an Ivy League university. When you try to read the scheme on the third party site, you have to click through several layers of titles, subtitles, chapters, subchapters, sections, etc. just to be able to read one portion of the scheme at a time. As you try to just get to an actual sentence in the scheme you get prompted by a pop-up to donate $50+ to an unidentified entity for an ambiguous cause[4].<p>At this point, I've given up researching the matter further. The current system is indefensible and needs to be abandoned as soon as possible.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.irs.gov" rel="nofollow">http://www.irs.gov</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf</a>
[3] <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26" rel="nofollow">http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26</a>
[4] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/vSppOXX.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/vSppOXX.png</a>