The 75,000 Page Horror Story

While most of the American government can be characterized by regulatory overgrowth, few areas loom larger in the public imagination than the Tax Code. This reputation is well earned, as the Tax Code seems to become more complicated each time people try to reform it. Hundreds of years of revisions have left American taxpayers in an unenviable situation. While tax rates are at historic highs, the complexity of the Tax Code itself presents enough problems to be worthy of a complete renewal. The first problem with the Tax Code complexity is that enforcement has become such a nightmare that even the well-funded IRS cannot begin to properly enforce it. The next problem is that the tax code’s complexity unfairly benefits those with time, resources, and ironically, money, to spend avoiding taxation, allowing the richest and most unethical to benefit from the web of confusion. The last problem with the tax code is that it creates a fundamental rift between the American people and the government through providing a realistic view into the complexity and self-contradictory nature of the state.

The IRS is much maligned by anyone who wants to keep their well learned money, yet one of their greatest problems they face is that they can barely keep their head above water organizationally. The tax code is so complicated that it is nearly impossible to carry out action plans, or even create strategic priorities. Any focus that the IRS chooses for a tax cycle can be contradicted by another part of the tax code. Administrations constantly adding in different elements and revisions of the tax codes mean that the source document for enforcement provides much less clear guidance than can be found at other agencies. Only a small part of the tax code can be enforced, and the subjective choice about what part that is allows a lot of room for corruption and uncertainty. Additionally, the IRS bears the burden of punishing people who unknowingly violated the tax code while being unable to hunt down those who use its complexity to their advantage. A simplified Tax Code would benefit the IRS both strategically and administratively. 

The complexity of the tax code benefits the most unscrupulous and wealthy citizens uniquely. Not to mention that some parts of the tax code itself were written to provide benefits to friends of politicians throughout history, it is so vast that people with skilled lawyers and accountants can take a gamble on numerous loopholes and slight misclassification that will allow them to protect their money. Hypothetically, these people should be the greatest target of additional tax laws. When politicians pass tax laws, both they and the citizens are often subconsciously thinking of the unscrupulous wealthy as being on the receiving end of the incoming higher taxation. However, too many years of code growth have cemented the middle class and the most scrupulous  law-abiding rich citizens as those hardest hit by any increase in taxes. The IRS’ inability to enforce the Code along with the massive opportunity for abuse make complicated tax laws a boon for their intended targets.

At the root of the American identity is a repulsion to taxation. Of course some taxation is necessary for any government to exist, but the current state of taxation is a recurring point of contention between American citizens and their government. countless years and billions of dollars spent trying to fulfill and understand the requirements of the tax code serve as humiliating reminders of our government’s incompetence. Even the officials who voted to make the tax code law can barely understand the parts they most support. The government needs no help losing trust, but forcing a massive and extremely complicated set of laws to come into contact with nearly every American, every year, does little to repair the bond that has been severed. The worst stereotypes of the Federal Government are shown to be true in the tax codes’ bland display of bureaucratic rot and excess.

Before the level of taxation can be discussed, we must first recognize the blatantly terrible practicalities of the tax code. It is both theoretically and practically compromised. It does no good for those enforcing it or those it is being enforced upon. While a simplified tax code might not provide a special case for every possibility in human life, it might be time to recognize that having a brutally simple tax code would be better. Some good things would not be as heavily incentivized by tax credits, but the deletion of the miasma of confusion that currently exists would allow Americans of all types to flourish.