Society Needs Hacking

Every year, an army of hackers takes aim at the tax code. The tax code is not computer code, but it is a series of rules--supposedly deterministic algorithms--that take data about your income and determine the amount of money you owe. This code has vulnerabilities, more commonly known as loopholes. It has exploits; those are tax avoidance strategies. There is an entire industry of black-hat hackers who exploit vulnerabilities in the tax code: We call them accountants and tax attorneys.