There are two things that disturb me about the US government:

1. As a whole, it seems to operate on the assumption of guilt; and

2. It seems bought and paid for by special interests, pork barrelling and so forth.

As a foreigner I of course have foreign retirement and bank accounts. If they total more than $10,000 (at any point in the last calendar year) you need to report them. This is FBAR (Foreign Bank Account Reporting).

Failure to do so can result in civil penalties up to the 300% of the balance and/or criminal prosecution. Why? To fight money laundering, drugs, terrorism or child pornography (every piece of onerous US legislation or prosecution is justified by ostensibly fighting one of more of these things; even sharing MP3s).

How are foreign retirement accounts treated? Are they taxable? How do you report them? Nobody really knows. Just tick "Other" and write "Retirement account" and hope for the best.

If your foreign assets are above a certain amount there is another separate form you need to send to the Treasury department IIRC.

You can e-file this form... if you use Internet Explorer. The JavaScript actually doesn't work in any other browser in a way that locks your account after 2-3 attempts.

In Australia the ATO (Australian Tax Office) produces e-tax, which for most people allows you to file taxes for free. But beyond that, the ATO doesn't seem to have this same level of mistrust of its citizens that the IRS does.

In Australia it doesn't scare me to make an honest mistake. In the US it does. This is not only for taxes but things like immigration issues.

In some European countries, once a tax return is accepted, that's it, it's done. The government basically can't reopen that later in an audit. In Australia I think they can go back 7 years. No idea what it is in the US. Probably to the day you were born. Now I'm sure there are exceptions to that rule (as in if you commit deliberate fraud) but the point of the system isn't to punish innocent mistakes.

All the while corporations and high net-worth individuals get away with blue murder as far as tax obligations go. The US could solve a lot of problems if it treated foreign corporate earnings the same as foreign individual earnings (in that you owe taxes on foreign income even if it isn't repatriated but tax you've paid with double-tax treaty countries offsets that obligation).

Yes by all means send me to prison for failing to mention a $24,000 retirement account in Australia I can't touch until I'm 65 instead. Great use of resources.

EDIT: to clarify (2), which is the major point relevant to this article, I don't understand why other governments don't seem so easily bought and sold for a pittance (in this case $1.5M over 5 years).

Another example: toxic fire retardants used in pretty much all couches due to a California law bought by an industry only worth tens of millions a year [1].

In the case of TurboTax specifically, I think so many people use them because of (1) and the complexity of the tax system created by (2).

Many people use TurboTax. You can say that's because of lobbying but that's only part of the story.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/arlene-blums-crus...