I don’t make a big issue about paying taxes. I really don’t mind. I under­stand the con­cept. There are cer­tain things that indi­vidual per­sons or small groups are unable to do or fund with their own resources. As a country we pool our money so we can have inter­states and national defense and power grids.

My issue is with the com­plexity. It seems like the system could be so much easier. It’s not as if the amount of money we make is a secret. The gov­ern­ment has the ability to take money from our pay­checks before we even receive them. The whole process of having to “file a tax form” with the IRS seems a bit redun­dant, and the forms them­selves are com­pli­cated enough to sup­port an entire sea­sonal industry of tax prepa­ra­tion spe­cial­ists – not to men­tion an array of online and offline soft­ware tools. And my taxes aren’t even that complicated.

This year I used on of the online tax ser­vices. Here is an inter­esting study in inter­face design: how to make a very com­plex process simple to under­stand and easy to com­plete. For the most part, I’d have to say they did a very good job. Some com­pa­nies have been doing this for a while, and it shows. Their user inter­face designs are attrac­tive, easy to scan, and imple­mented with thoughtful touches that min­i­mize common user mistakes.

Found online: a coworker sent me a link to this article about common usability design mis­takes. These a basi­cally “common sense” points, but it’s always good to be reminded.