you won't get any argument from me there. i've always felt that the tax law was deliberately made complicated so that people who could afford accountants and lawyers, or who had complex financial lives with lots of investments, businesses and sources of income, could get out of paying their fair share.

tax law may start off with the best of intentions, but someone usually figures out a way to adapt their behavior to exploit it or lobby for the changes needed to make it work for them. and it works the other way, too: politicians will use the tax law to curry favor with powerful constituencies and get votes.

the problem with designing a fair income tax law is that there are two contradictory considerations which must be simultaneously reconciled.

1) those who can afford to pay more should pay more. the cost of the absolute necessities of life makes up a smaller proportion of their income. besides, those who benefit the most from any arrangement should bear the major part of its upkeep.

2)otoh, no one should pay someone elses share of taxes

in my opinion, the only way to get around this impasse is to have the first x dollars of everyone's income exempt from taxes, and that everyone pay a fixed percentage y of all income over x as tax. the values of x and y would be determined legislatively, by our elected representatives, just like the founding fathers set it up.

so on april 15, "doing your taxes" would simply require every working citizen solving the equation tax = y ( income-x ) and mailing in his W-2s and a check.

it might even be possible, by picking the right values of x and y, to eliminate corporate taxes altogether, making our business incredibly competitive in the world market. and the savings derived from administering the tax system, and paying professionals to figure a way to beat it, would be substantial. that alone would probably pay for a few aircraft carriers.

but of course, i "don't know anything about economics", so i guess we're stuck with the most arbitrary, unfair, complicated and politicized tax structure in the Milky Way.