I have a master’s degree in Computer Science, have taken graduate level Symbolic Logic, and had to resort to TurboTax about 12 years ago because I could not, with any degree of confidence, do the computation for the AMT. I know how to follow an IF..THEN...ELSE, but not the way that the IRS presents it!
My theory is they make it as confusing as possible so they have an excuse to audit those they want to audit. “Oh Mr. Rumsfeld, you did in fact make an error and we do believe it may have been made in past returns as well. We are going to have to set up an audit..”