Spanning some sixty thousand pages in any given year, the United States tax code is a behemoth of laws that requires studious diligence for the nation’s Certified Public Accountants.
For this reason, tax continuing education is needed of them so as to maintain their licenses in good standing with the certifying bodies governing the profession in each state of the union.

To most folks, this kind of life spent devoted to such a career appears to be like hell on earth, no matter how much in love with numbers any individual CPA may be.
And actually, while lighter subjects are available for study, much of an accounting professional’s tax continuing education may very well be hefty.
Certainly, one has to wonder at those who are content, if not passionate, about a life committed to ever-changing rules governing what is in effect other people’s money, even if one is paid rather handsomely oneself to fuss over it!

Why, exactly, should something like tax continuing education be necessary in the first place?
What is wrong with the tax system in this country that it should be a highly paid out specialty (with many a sub-specialty within) just to pay back one’s fair share in helping society?

Obviously, a lot of our tax laws originate due to a desire to motivate or dissuade something.
Therefore tax breaks are employed to motivate businesses to hire workers or discourage the production of one crop over another.
But how about the others?
Why should they be so complex?
Say income taxes – why should there be so many loopholes?

It’s really a complex matter – and in another sense, it’s thoroughly simple.
Generally speaking, America was founded on a tax revolt and a hatred of taxes have been part of the cultural DNA ever since.
Naturally, it’s strange how within the last fifty to sixty years taxes have been decreasing for corporations as well as the wealthiest citizens while increasing for everybody else, but that’s another story….

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