[tothrowaway]

If a rich person shorts Intuit stock, spend $5-10 million developing a really slick tax program, and releases it for free, could they break even?

They could make it a charity, and the $5-10 million would be tax deductible on top of it.

At that point, maybe Intuit wouldn't have the motivation to keep the tax code complicated. Then we could move to a simplified system at the speed of congress.

[giantg2]

I think the sticking point is that during that transition you have to have people to release the constant updates that currently happen. Maybe they can be volunteers, but maybe not.