It turns out a deliberate ignorance of the tax code is bad for you.

Year 1 she didn't pay taxes and had to pay them all at the end. Was that enough to convince her to do minimal due diligence? Like literally 10 minutes of reading? Nope. Year 2 she paid the estimated tax payments based on year 1, even after her income doubled. She apparently didn't have a grade-school civics understanding of what a progressive tax code is. And now her problem is she spent all her money, including what she should have paid the government, and they aren't being entirely sympathetic.

She repeats no-one is to blame, and no-one deliberately did anything wrong throughout the article, I think to convince readers she isn't at fault. But really, really minimal research before freelancing would have saved her, so minimal that it's grossly negligent not to have performed it, particularly after the wake up call in year one.

If she needs to find the source of the problem, a mirror will sort it out.