The IRS began accepting tax returns last week, which means that your juicy, juicy tax refund could hit your beautiful, bereft bank account in as little as three weeks.

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If you’re an accountant, it’s crunch time, and I hope the next few months pass expeditiously. But it’s also a busy time of the year for Joseph Bankman, a business law professor at Stanford University and also a clinical psychologist by training. “What an interesting intersection of expertise!” you may be noting to yourself. “I wonder what one would do with that!?” Glad you asked.

Since 2004 and earlier, Bankman’s been on a Don Quixote-like quest to make filing taxes not suck. After all, the government has most of the information on your tax return already, meaning that when it comes to filing taxes, we could also, like, not.

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Bankman’s devised a number of tax-filing systems that would work a lot better, though only one state, California, has actually come close to adopting them. And for this contribution to society, Bankman hasn’t gotten any parades. Instead, he’s actually made some enemies.

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“Tax policy isn’t like abortion or gun control,” he tells Inverse. “It’s not a high-profile subject that you’re going to learn on your own.”

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“This is a classic case of a concentrated group with a lot to lose vs. everyone else who has no knowledge,” Bankman explains. “Industry is pretty well-entrenched, and they’re entrenched in both parties. They’re able to hire terrific lobbyists who are close to both parties. And [people like me] can work with staffers and write an occasional op-ed, but that doesn’t begin to get us the kind of person-to-person access that Intuit’s lobbyists have in almost all states.”