Question

What factors make tax rules so complicated?

Answer 1

Answer:

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Explanation:

Almost everyone agrees that the current tax system is too complicated, yet almost every year the system gets more complex, not less. Why? Tax simplicity almost always conflicts with other policy goals.

For example, the simplest—and least distorting—tax is a head tax, a fixed-dollar tax on everyone. But a head tax would be unfair, taking no account of differences in the incomes and needs of individuals, families, and businesses.

Most people believe taxes should be fair, conducive to economic prosperity, and enforceable, as well as simple. But even people who agree on these goals often disagree about the relative importance of each. As a result, policies usually represent a balance among competing goals, and simplicity often loses out to other priorities.

For example, most countries tailor tax burdens to individual taxpayers’ characteristics. That can make taxes fairer, but more complex. Income has to be traced from businesses to individuals. Individual characteristics such as marital status and number of dependents, as well as the composition of expenditures or income, have to be reported and documented. These conflicting objectives appear to be especially relevant in the current tax code, where the desire to reduce tax burdens for particular groups have added significant complexity.

Politics compounds the complexity. Interest groups—and thus politicians—support tax subsidies for particular activities. And these targeted subsidies inevitably complicate the tax system by creating distinctions among taxpayers with different sources and uses of income.

The current tax law was not enacted all at once but is a result of numerous provisions added or subtracted in multiple tax bills. Often Congress designs legislation under self-imposed constraints, such as short-term revenue goals or effects on the distribution of tax burdens among income groups. The result is that tax incentives are often designed in complex ways to limit the revenue losses or benefits to high-income taxpayers or to prevent their use by unintended beneficiaries.

Annual reports by the National Taxpayer Advocate have presented proposals for simplifying the tax code, including reforms of education incentives, retirement incentives, child benefits, and the alternative minimum tax.