# Why Tax Software Is Broken (And What Vectors Really Are)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-i-get-it-with-dr-andy-6931085/why-tax-software-is-broken-and-what-vectors-really-are
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-i-get-it-with-dr-andy-6931085/why-tax-software-is-broken-and-what-vectors-really-are.md
Podcast: [Now I Get It, with Dr. Andy](https://stenobird.com/podcast/now-i-get-it-with-dr-andy-6931085)
Published: 2026-06-18T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/now-i-get-it-with-dr-andy/episodes/why-tax-software-is-broken-and-what-vectors-really-are
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/665f291eaa134f001225717a/e/6a3103c06edea1d9ab11e269/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/now-i-get-it-with-dr-andy-6931085/episodes/why-tax-software-is-broken-and-what-vectors-really-are
Duration seconds: 763

## Resource

Today I'm tackling something a little different: taxes. After spending years writing my book Love Quotient and other projects in physics and math, I funded that work through earnings in the tech sector, specifically long-term capital gains. That led me into a maze of federal versus California tax treatment, amended returns, and a frustrating "screw you letter" from the IRS demanding paperwork they could have processed themselves if they'd just shared their own software with taxpayers. I talk about why that doesn't happen, who benefits from keeping it that way, and the surprising silver lining: California's tax agency was actually reasonable to deal with, which genuinely surprised me. Then I shift gears completely into something I've been working on for the past year: a new way of understanding scalar and vector quantities in physics. I unpack why "scalars" like mass, temperature, and length aren't really scalars at all, but one-dimensional vectors tied to units, and how units themselves function as bases for these vector spaces. From there, I show how ordinary vector quantities like force and velocity are tensor products of geometric vectors with these one-dimensional magnitude spaces, and how this framework recovers the classic magnitude-and-direction picture of physics in a cleaner, more unified way. In this episode you will learn: (00:00) Why I ended up filing amended tax returns after years of writing my book and research projects (03:43) Why government tax agencies don't give taxpayers access to their own processing software (04:18) How political incentives keep tax prep companies like H&R Block and Liberty Tax in business (06:00) Why "scalar" quantities like mass and temperature aren't actually scalars (09:27) How units function as bases for one-dimensional v…

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