It's Simple

One thing Yglesias whines about a lot is the idea of simplifying the tax code.  This has a lot of upsides and no real downsides, other than for lawyers and accountants who are paid to exploit the complexities and ambiguities in the code so that their wealthy clients save money.  I always assumed that, at some point, the complexity of the tax code would cease to matter, because computers would just take care of shit.  So, while to humans, the difference between 15 rules and 1500 rules to apply before arriving at a figure is rather large; to a computer, this difference takes up all of .003 extra seconds (I used Stirling's to approximate that).

Some persuasive evidence that I am wrong arrived today, in the form of a W2 1099 from a company I did some work for this year.  The boxes on it are numbered.  Here are the titles associated with numbers 1-10:

1. Rents
2. Royalties
3. Other income
4. Federal income tax withheld
5. Fishing boat proceeds
6. Medical and health care payments
7. Nonemployee compensation
8. Substitute payments in leu of dividends or interest
9. Payer made direct sales of $5000 or more of consumer products to a buyer (recipient) for resale [with a box for checking]
   
10. Car insurance proceeds