Yes. Others are 'free' to pay more to get candidates elected that would simplify the tax return. The 'beauty' of concentrated benefits and distributed pain is that the organization overhead combined with the real but sufficiently diluted pain for each individual sufferer sort of pre-empts this. This is why in these so called 'free' markets you end-up with all these complete absurd situations at the societal level.

>I meant is it really a free market when Intuit needs to pay off the government through lobbying to stop them making tax filing simpler so they can keep their market.

You make it sound as if the government is just dying to simplify this stuff, but Intuit won't let them.

Intuit lobbies in its self interest. There is nothing wrong with that. The damage is done by the politicians who listen to the lobbying effort and play along.

The government made taxes complex to begin with.

Pretending like the only thing stopping them is Intuit is pretty disingenuous. All the handouts to various groups (homeowners, parents, college grads, etc) would go away under a simpler system. You're going to be the congressman to tell home owners in your district, you know, the ones who vote frequently and donate money to campaigns, that they no longer get to deduct their mortgage interest and property taxes? Very, very doubtful.