In 1962, an orthodontist testified before the IRS about overbites. His solution? Clarinet lessons: “He considered continued practice with this instrument therapeutic treatment towards alleviating the specific condition,” read an excerpt from the IRS bulletin in 1962. Translation? Playing the clarinet can help correct your child’s overbite. So the IRS decided, in the name of overbite sufferers everywhere, that parents can get a doctor’s note and write off clarinet lessons as a medical expense.

A few decades later, there are more than 2,000 credits, write-offs, exceptions and exemptions in the IRS rulebook. Part of the reason is in the U.S., tax credits are often a vehicle for social policy.

“Look, there's nothing inherently bad about using the tax system to achieve a policy goal,” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University. Huang said a lot of these exemptions do really good things: The earned income tax credit helps lower income families. Other tax breaks however, like the one for private jets, maybe not so much.

Added up, these little exemptions have big implications for the U.S. tax system, said Huang. “Our tax system raises far less revenue, which is generally what you have a tax system for.”

There are implications for taxpayers, too. In the U.S., we spend an estimated $150 billion on tax prep, advisors, and filing software every year. Not to mention seven billion hours. Much of that time (and much of the U.S. tax code itself) is devoted to loopholes.

“A lot of the most complicated things in tax that companies and filers do are things that they choose to do in order to avoid taxes,” says Huang.

All of this creates a situation that is pretty unique to the U.S. In most of the world, there is no monumental tax day.

“There is no functional equivalent of April 15th, where everybody’s rushing to make sure they file their return on time,” said Lawrence Zelenak, a professor of tax law at Duke University.

No April 15? No looming deadline, crashing computers, desperately searching for receipts or Googling whether I can possibly write off part of my trip to Cabo as a work expense? That sounds awesome! Where did we go wrong?

Zelenak said the answer to that lies squarely in Form 1040, the IRS form most Americans use to file their taxes. “In 1975, Congress introduced the earned income tax credit, which is basically a wage subsidy for lower wage parents,” said Zelenak. “That could have been set up as the government would send low-income, working parents checks every month or every year.”

In fact, that’s how it works in much of the world. In Austria, Australia, South Korea, France, and Japan, the government deposits money in your bank account every month for each kid. But in the U.S., “Congress said ‘Hey, we’ve already got tax returns,’ so they created a refundable tax credit. Congress decided it was administratively simpler to have the IRS take on that role.”

It was also politically simpler. Politicians were way less likely to fight a tax credit than to fight creating another program like food assistance or welfare. But for millions of people, said Zelenak, Form 1040s work like government aid.

“If you are eligible for these refundable tax credits, your tax liability may be substantially less than zero, and the government sends you a check,” said Zelenak. 

Form 1040 may just be the hardest working tax form on earth. Also, one of the most frustrating. Zelenak even wrote a book about it. The title? Learning to Love Form 1040. 

The IRS may soon need some copies. Federal cuts have eliminated about 25% of IRS staff. The new tax bill that passed this summer includes dozens of additional write-offs and deductions.