Simplification Isn't Simple

Last year's 46-page return.

Gradually clearing the clutter of our financial affairs, I managed to reduce our 2010 tax return by three pages. (Shrinkage could also have been correlated with less income in some activities.)

Today, October 17th, is the absolute deadline for filing 2010 income tax returns. The only way for us to file on April 15th would be if we were to divest ourselves of some investments whose records for the previous year aren't finalized until August. Getting out would be complicated, not to mention costly, from a tax and legal point of view.

If simplification were simple, more people would do it.