Lawrence Lessig has a fascinating article on how the State of California tried to simplify preparing taxes. It used payroll information to do a "ReadyReturn" that could be just signed and returned. Or they could use the info on it to make their own return.

Of course, the tax preparation lobby started to pressure for the test program to be abandoned. Which is ridiculous. And some lawmakers listened. Which is more ridiculous.

Really like this quote:

And efficiency is good regardless of who it might hurt; it is especially good if it hurts those who feed off inefficiency.