How many pages does it take to lay out the insanely complicated rules and requirements of our tax code? According to tax publisher CCH, the total number of pages devoted to federal tax code rules, IRS rulings, and regulations has grown to 72,536:
It's no wonder that even the government's own experts and officials can't figure it out. Any system of rules that requires in excess 72,000 pages to explain and understand borders on useless. At this point it might as well be Calvinball.
Via Cato's Chris Edwards.
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What the hell happened between 2000 and 2006? I don't remember major tax reforms going on then.
I'm not being sarcastic; I really don't remember anything happening that would explain a 20k increase in rules, but I may be forgetting / brainfarting on something obvious. Terrorism related, perhaps?
Medicare Part D? Dunno, that's all I got.
SarbOx
Deregulation!
Eventually, enough rules will exist, that congress won't ever need to pass another law. Anything congress wants to enact, they can just piece together from the the hundreds of thousands of titles, and sub-titles of existing legislation.
They already do that. Just read some actual legislation.
+19,598
Alternative Minimum Tax. That's one of them. And it's bit me in the ass every year since its institution.
Would you rather it be just one page with a percentage written on it? Would you rather people not get deductions for this and credits for that? Would you rather we all just pay the same rate? Is that what you want?
Yes. Thank you for asking.
I'd rather it be 0 pages.
Yeah. I'm even fine with the fucking brackets, as long as we just have a simple piecewise linear formula to get from income (defined with due regard to common sense) to tax.
It's exactly what it's supposed to be: so complex that if the government scum want to get you, they can, because there's no way you haven't done something wrong.
It's called a feature, not a bug.
It's strictly a tool of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad. "Good" and "bad" being defined by the government, of course.
It's a jobs program for attorneys and accountants.
I believe the more politically correct phrase that government boosters use is: "The tax code is used to set policy".
Three felonies a day, bitches!
Unless you're sufficiently connected. Then you get a cabinet position.
Linking to the Holder story in connection to the IRC...again?? WTF Suderman. There better be a Battlefield 3 thread you're working on to make up for this.
What the hell is up with the timeline scale?
If you plot it correctly (with proper spacing of the years), and leave out 1913 and 1939, it's almost linear on a log scale. Even leaving in those years the trend approximates an exponential. Scary. I would hope that the missing years are simply missing data, and not the result of cherry picking.
I know. It's pretty irritating. Perhaps the years were selected so the graph could be so perfectly exponential.
That would be unacceptable, and the dishonesty of that approach would tarnish the veracity of the main point: you still are subject to over 72,000 pages of regulations simply related to taxation. Unless there's a whole bunch of sections that start off with: "ATTENTION: THIS SECTION ONLY APPLIES TO FAT-CAT RICH FOLKS--NORMAL GOD-FEARING CITIZENS NEED NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THIS SECTION. HAVE A NICE DAY, CITIZEN."
English majors.
Actually, I see it more like Whackbat.
That was the best part of a mildly amusing film.
That movie was awesome in its subtlety. It's an animated feature that when you watch it, even without knowing beforehand, you say, "Holy shit, this is a Wes Anderson film."-- assuming you know Wes Anderson.
I found it very charming.
At this point it might as well be Calvinball.
Compared to the tax code Calvinball is as precise and logical as a geometry proof.
Whatever your ideology how can any sane person look at that number, 72,500 pages, and not think that something is fundamentally wrong. I mean fundamentally. Something like structural change or a 'paradigm shift' should follow that.
That's why we take a vote for our representatives. To make it someone else's responsibility. No complaining, now.
Actual question when doing writeoffs in Turbo Tax: Are you a qualified performing artist?
We're Europe. It's over.
Both progressives and libertarians would like the tax code to be 1 page long in its entirety.
The libertarian version would say something to the effect of "Flat 15% in order to pay for only those functions authorized explicitly by the constitution", while that of Progressives would say something to the effect of "Take everything and dole out what we feel is appropriate to those we favor."
OT: io9's hilarious inept attempt to countdown the top ten libertarian science fiction novels.
Followed by a tepid 2-minutes-hate in the comments.
Why is Jeff Bridges as 'The Dude' on the cover of The Dispossessed?
Because they took his rug.
I saw that the first go-around. I'm not sure they understand what the word means.
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