How to Fix America’s Cruel and Unusual Tax Code: Editorial

It probably escaped your attention, but the Internal Revenue Service recently piloted a program to help Americans cope with their notoriously complex tax system. Direct File was meant to help taxpayers in 12 states prepare and submit their returns electronically. Some 19 million people were eligible to use it. Thanks partly to a rollout late in the tax-preparation season, fewer than 1% of them actually did.

The IRS was pleased with the results nonetheless: Taxpayers who used the system said they liked it, according to a survey, and the idea all along was to “start small, make sure it ...