Our 10 Million-Word Tax Code

The Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell provides a shocking chart from the Tax Foundation on The Federal Tax Code. You will see that the number of words in the code has exploded to over 10 million from under 4 million in the mid 1970s and just over one million back in the sensible 1950s.

Dr. Mitchell writes:

I think its fair to say that complexity is a proxy for corruption. (And even the World Bank agrees with me.) Our tax code is a Byzantine mess because interest groups and lobbyists conspire with politicians to swap loopholes for campaign cash.

The only winners are the cronyists, politicians, and other insiders who get rich by using the coercive power of government.

I can’t help but wonder why no candidate has explicitly embraced the gold standard of tax reform.