MauledAgain

Recently, reader Morris alerted me to a post on the AWS Machine Learning Blog. According to the post, “The tax code includes 15,000+ federal tax forms and state tax forms for individual and business tax filers in the U.S.” Reader Morris commented, “I have read parts of the Internal Revenue Code and various state tax codes and I have never seen a federal or state form in these publications.” I replied, “And you are correct, forms are not in the code or regulations.”

I spared Reader Morris a thorough critique of the sentence. It’s not only the absurd claim that forms are found in “the tax code.” It’s also the use of the term “The tax code,” a term that lacks specificity. There are hundreds of “tax codes” in the United States. The most well-known is the federal Internal Revenue Code. Every state and territory has a tax code, though with different names, such as revenue code. Most counties and many cities, towns, and townships have tax codes. So which tax code is being referenced by the sentence that begins with “The tax code”? Worse, how can one tax code (“’the’ tax code”) include federal AND state tax forms?

It’s easy to understand why tax forms rarely, if ever, included in legislation. Tax forms change from year to year. Legislatures, town councils, and county commissions don’t have the time and financial resources to amend legislation continuously to insert the latest version of a form. At best, legislation might contain a form template, or a list of fields or items that are required to be placed on a form. But surely, the idea that there are “15,000+” forms in whatever is that “the tax code” is beyond worrisome.

I wonder if the author of the AWS Machine Learning Blog can provide a list, with citations, of the 15,000+ forms that are in “the tax code.” Though I wonder, I very much doubt it.

I also wonder how many people read the AWS Machine Learning Blog and consider that sentence to be true. I wonder how many then share with other people their “discovery” that there are 15,000+ tax forms buried in “the tax code.” But I need not wonder how misinformation and untruths spread like wildfire, fertilizing the ignorance that is destroying civilization.