Our Mission

It is better to do nothing at all than to do wrong. Ignorance of one's own wrongdoing is no excuse. We must be very critical of our own actions when we seek to make the world a better place.

Although reducing human suffering is not a comprehensive moral compass, it is an indication of goodness. Human suffering is pain without choice. Many people have no choice but to call the IRS to resolve issues for which no self-serve tool exists. Calling the IRS is painful due to repeated courtesy disconnects, long hold times, outdated telephony technology, and chronic understaffing. The result is human suffering.

A paid tool that makes talking to a human at the IRS pain-free creates choice. People can choose to pay for the pain-free approach or they can choose the free and painful approach. The introduction of choice reduces suffering so creating and promoting the paid tool is good.

This line of reasoning has two significant flaws. The first flaw is that the paid tool is only a real option if it is affordable. Building the tool is only moral if it is affordable. We seek to do good so we build an affordable tool.

The second flaw in the reasoning is that the situation presented is not set in stone. The situation is actually continually created by human choices. The IRS could be staffed such that the process of calling the IRS causes no pain. Additional self-serve tools could be built to reduce the need to call the IRS. Tax laws could be simplified to reduce the number of special cases. The paid tool benefits from the status-quo, but if we pretend we have no control over the situation, we are taking the route of ignorance that was not considered a valid excuse in our first paragraph.

Our opinion is that the most realistic and practical improvement to the situation is to increase IRS staffing. We advocate for this improvement via our representation through the democratic process.