About Tax Help USA
Tax Help USA is a non-partisan educational effort to make the tax code simpler and fairer. We endeavor to present ideas palatable to liberals and conservatives alike, to educate and persuade, not vilify or berate.
Tax Help USA is not a formal organization. There are no meetings, memberships or donations. This is neither political committee nor 501(c)3 foundation. It is merely the writings on this site, and the actions of its readers, be they writing their respective representatives, running for office or spreading the word. The web site itself is a sole proprietorship, with the same legal status as a magazine or blog, thus with few restrictions on freedom of speech and the possibility of selling ads in the future to compensate for time spent writing and researching.
While we advance many liberal, conservative, moderate and libertarian values, we are anathema to many special interests, who have lobbied themselves largesse and special privileges. Since we thus have little prospects for large donations, creating a formal organization would be unproductive overhead. The Simplifier has witnessed many under-funded political campaigns and movements overburdened by overhead, and torn apart by donors and activists arguing over where the money went. Sometimes it's better to just do it, without the pretense of official status.
While this website has a single owner, we still have potential democratic action in the form of comments, guest posts, and individual choice over which ideas to embrace and which to ignore or even oppose. Individuals acting as themselves making phone calls or sending handwritten notes have more clout with their representatives than official organization members spamming congressional mailboxes with boilerplate letters.
About The Simplifier
The Simplifier is a longtime freedom activist who opted to put aside his vision for the ideal amount of government in favor of fixing the current financial crisis, as well the bigger crisis that looms as the baby boomers near retirement. As such, he operates here under an obvious pseudonym, to separate the writings here from his more ideological tracts. Pragmatism, compromise and patriotism are the rules here. More utopian ideas may leak out of his brain from time to time, but feel free to ignore or embrace them as you see fit.
The Simplifier's long stint as a freedom activist has led him to read many books on economics, which are relevant to designing a better tax system, regardless of whether that tax system is to fund a European style welfare state, a solo superpower, or a minimal night watchman government. He is also a scientist and software engineer by trade. Software engineering is the art of clearly specifying and simplifying rules that work under many circumstances. The tax code is much like badly written "spaghetti code" greatly in need of refactoring and debugging.
The Simplifier is not, however, and accountant nor a lawyer. Do not take his understanding of the current system as legal advice! He will be wrong at times on this. The rule is: if a PhD physicist cannot understand the tax code in his spare time, then it's too darned complicated!
It's too darned complicated. But maybe we can fix it.