I just pretty much finished learning Tao recently and i have to admit that the timing on some move did take me some time to get used to. Unlike a lot of characters, her A B and C cancels require quite a tight timing and if you're playing online, the lag doesn't help at all, I'm pretty much stuck picking a minimum connection of 3 when playing Ranking at all time when i wanna play my Tao.
Oh and if you think her combos are acting inconsistently (I thought the same thing when i started learning her) and you're still having trouble with the 2 combos you mentioned, You are gonna want to throw your controller around once you get to combo 9 and 10... Unfortunately, If you want to do decent damage, you're pretty much gonna have to learn them if you intend to keep on playing Tao... Combo 9 at least...
Dunno if learning the Taunt loop is worth it anymore, i hear it's getting nerfed pretty bad in CS2 but I'm not sure if doing it a couple times before inputing the rest of the combo still increases the damage or not :/