Well, that's not how it works in e.g. the United Kingdom (where income tax is deducted at source for employees). Those items you mention are very rarely claimable expenses (you certainly can't claim your daily commute against tax), except for certain specialised trades. The truth is that the majority of people do not need to even submit a tax return each year, chiefly those that do are people who a) are self employed, b) are directors of a company, or c) earn significantly over the median wage so as to be liable for the highest rate of tax.

Some statistics: In the tax year 2008/2009 there were 30.9 million tax payers in the UK. By the deadline for submission, 7.84 million people submitted a tax return on time, and typically 10% of people missed the deadline (I CBA to find the actual data). That extrapolates to 8.8 million people, or 28% of the tax-paying population.

On my Core 2 Duo Mac, QuickTime uses around 5-10% of my CPU, flash uses 40-50%. It's less important on that machine, but on the older machine QuickTime can play 720p quite happily, while Flash can only handle normal quality YouTube stuff without dropping frames if nothing else is using the CPU. On my 1.2GHz Celeron laptop, Flash can't handle YouTube videos without dropping frames, but VLC can play them back using under 50% of my CPU.

"The main point of these fake movie UIs is different than that of real UIs: to tell a story very quickly, not to reveal and enable function."

This sentence is quite telling and ultimately the main reason behind the flash of (or lack of flash) in comupter UI's in motion pictures. They are used to drive the plot. Everyone here has surely noticed the cool looking way people "hack" computers in the movies. How about the slowing ticking progress bar and flashing data presented when people are illegally downloading files to a usb drive. In some movies the UI is so 3d and gesture advance as to make the user "dance" to interact with it. This is to present the virtuosity of the user at his craft. In other movies retro monochrome looking console UI's are used to give things an analog grittiness. I find the whole thing quite fascinating. Its a dream job if there ever was one.

The coolness of fictional media UI's does make it hard to design regular UI's for real products. The user expectation is pretty high. I always chuckle a little when I start up my PS3. The main nav is just a menu tree. The eye candy floating in the back has no function use whatsoever but most of the processing during the navigation phase is consumed by presenting the cool liquid effect in the background.

I've been watching "The 1st 48" (US reality show about solving murder cases) for a while. I love how all of the UIs are basically just MS Windows and maybe a web based perp search application because is what cops actually use. I compare this show to CSI all the time and "CSI fan" friends hate me for it.

That is because it /isn't/ a new law (yet). The UK Government has announced plans to introduce such a law, but this is the start of a quite long process that needs to see it:

1. Written
2. Approved by the House of Commons
3. Approved by the House of Lords
4. Given Royal assent
5. ???
6. Profit

Slashdot, quality journalism at its very best. The Sun would be proud of this calibre of news reporting.