Even Genius Has Its Limits

Albert Einstein bent time, reimagined gravity, and explained why light behaves the way it does. And every spring, like the rest of us, he handed his tax papers to someone else.

That is not a knock on Einstein. It is one of the most quietly brilliant things about him. The man who rewrote physics knew exactly where his genius ended, and he was not too proud to ask for help on the other side of that line. If you have ever stared at a tax form and wondered whether you are the problem, take heart: you are in remarkably good company.

Lunch, relativity, and a very honest confession

The story comes from Leo Mattersdorf, a New York accountant and tax consultant who prepared Einstein’s income tax returns from the time Einstein arrived in America in 1933 until his death in 1955. In a letter published in Time magazine on February 22, 1963, Mattersdorf shared a memory from one tax season.

He was at Einstein’s home in Princeton, New Jersey, working on the professor’s return, when Mrs. Einstein invited him to stay for lunch. Partway through the meal, Einstein turned to him with a chuckle and said:

Mattersdorf, being a good sport, countered that relativity had to be harder. Einstein disagreed: relativity, he insisted, was easy. That is when Mrs. Einstein delivered the best line of the afternoon, noting dryly that it was easy for him.

This was not a one-off joke from someone Einstein barely knew. The two were genuine friends. Einstein visited the Mattersdorf family on Long Island, gave Leo a telescope as a gift in 1938, and even proofread Leo’s book on astronomy. The physicist trusted his accountant with his finances, and the accountant shared his love of the stars.

And Einstein said much the same thing in public. In March 1944, the Associated Press reported that he had to call in a tax expert to help with his return, quoting him as calling it a question too difficult for a mathematician, one better suited to a philosopher.

Why was Einstein right?

Here is the thing: Einstein was not just being modest. Physics, for all its difficulty, plays by consistent rules. The speed of light was the same in 1905 as it is today. Gravity does not get amended in committee.

The tax code is a different animal. It is written by people, revised by people, and interpreted by people, and it changes constantly. The IRS’s own National Taxpayer Advocate reported in 2012 that Congress had made nearly 5,000 changes to the tax code since 2001, more than one a day, and that the code had grown to nearly four million words. A later report from the same office estimated that individuals and businesses spend about six billion hours a year just complying with filing requirements.

So when Einstein, whose Nobel Prize recognized his work on the photoelectric effect, said taxes were harder than relativity, he had a point. Nature’s laws hold still. Tax law keeps moving. Keeping up takes someone who follows it every single day.

You do not need a Nobel Prize to get this right

The real lesson of Einstein’s tax story is not that taxes are impossible. It is that the smartest people know which problems to hand off, so they can pour their energy into the work only they can do.

For Einstein, that meant the mysteries of the universe. For you, it might be growing your business, raising your family, planning a well-earned retirement, or simply getting your evenings back. Whatever your big idea is, we would love to help protect the time you spend on it.

At Schwartz & Seifert CPAs, we follow the tax code so you do not have to. We help you find savings, stay compliant, and build a financial strategy that makes sense for your life. Think of us as your Leo Mattersdorf, minus the 1930s commute to Princeton.

Curious about the other side of Einstein’s comparison? The U.S. Department of Energy has a friendly, plain-English explainer: DOE Explains… Relativity. Judge for yourself whether it’s easier than your tax return.