U.S. Tax Code Benefits Washington Insiders

Here the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell writes that one of the new traditions at the IRS is an annual release of tax scams. “Unsurprisingly, the list contains no warnings about the needless complexity and punitive nature of the tax code. Nor does the IRS say anything about how taxpayers lose the presumption of innocence if there’s any sort of conflict with the tax agency.”

As a historical footnote, Mitchell writes, “When the income tax was first imposed back in 1913, the top tax rate was only 7 percent, the tax form was only two pages, and the tax code was easily understandable.”