I read 16 IRS publications from Korea to build a tax app. Here's what broke my brain.

I read 16 IRS publications from Korea. Then I found several government audit reports from the GAO. Here's the number that stopped me cold.

I am not American. I've never filed a Schedule C. I've never spoken to the IRS.

But I was already building a product for 31 million U.S. self-employed people. So I needed to understand their tax reality.

16 IRS publications. Multiple audit reports. Hundreds of pages. One month.

The number I could not get past: $13,500.

According to GAO analysis, that's the average amount sole proprietors underreport in income each year. Not intentionally. Just because small moments often never get recorded.

The problem isn't cheating. The system assumes perfect records, and real life rarely has them.

The GAO dug deeper. Among sole proprietors who did report income, about 65% still underreported, largely due to missing or incomplete records.

Same missing record. Two losses at once.

One coffee with a client. No record kept. Deduction likely lost.

I'm building something around this. Very early days. Before talking about the product (B-ZEC), I wanted to talk about the problem.

Does any of this match what you've experienced as a freelancer or sole proprietor?