Paul Greenberg calls for a fresh start for the IRS in today’s Washington Times:



“Most of us don’t object to paying our taxes — living in the United States of America is not only a privilege but a great bargain. What we object to, or should, is how hard, how complicated, how expensive and sometimes just plain hopeless it is to figure out how much we owe.


“Awash in a sea of paper, or maybe in an ocean of electronic impulses in this internetted age, the American taxpayer needs help. Every new sweeping tax law Congress enacts — always called a “reform” — makes the job even more complicated and, if possible, more confusing. And the tax code longer. 
   
“One such grand reform, makeover and general overhaul was enacted in 2001. It included 441 changes in the tax code. Just one of them — about how to claim a tax rebate if you didn’t get one that year — generated a million errors on that single line of people’s returns.


“The country’s tax code has grown as indecipherable to the average American as Hammurabi’s. It might as well be written on clay tablets.”


Read the whole article here.