Here’s How We Can Learn and Improve From the French Tax Code

The idea that modernizing the US tax system is insurmountable seems to be behind every shrug and “what can you do?” when discussing the complexity and arcaneness of the tax filing process. And yet, the method of processing income tax returns in France is automated and relies entirely on an algorithm written and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate, or DGFiP.

The underlying language—from the actual code to the compiler that turns the code in to a machine-readable application—has been repeatedly updated since 1990. It was written to run on processors that were about a third as powerful as ...