Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Before I agree with you there, and I tend to, I have to ask... Do you think initially the tax code grew because of people gaming the system or because of its own tendencies toward creating red tape and finding new ways to squeeze money out of people? I sometimes wonder which came first and started the whole mess.
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There's always a tension between simplicity and fairness. A truly simple tax code (e.g., a flat tax) means that people with widely differing circumstances (e.g., kids, spouse, home mortgage, whatever) will pay the same in taxes. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe a bad thing. Anyway, that creates a reason for exceptions, whether a dependent exemption, mortgage deduction, whatever. And once you have that, you'll have ever more pressure to create exceptions so that something good is not being taxed too much. And it goes and goes until you're down to oil extraction from farm land being something that should not be taxed, but in fact subsidized.
