This. I recently started my own business, and having an accountant explain to me all the different legal ways of optimizing the tax foot print of myself and my business has definitely been an eye opener.

It's also been humbling. When I was just an employee, I used to wonder why taxes couldn't just be a simple linear function of income. These days, I have a much greater appreciation for the complexities involved in designing taxes such that they maximize income for the state (local or otherwise) while still being a fair system by some measure, possibly determined by ballot boxes every four years or so.