I mean, consider the following problems we now have:
1. We have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC trying to influence 535 members of Congress, the President, Vice-President and 12 Cabinet secretaries to "tweak" the tax code--often to support very narrow constituencies.
2. All that "tweaking" of the tax code has result in a 60,000-plus page monster of tax code that even the IRS admits couldn't figure out completely.
3. Because of this complexity, Americans spend US$565 billion per year in compliance costs and pre-compliance economic decisions.
4. The tax code often causes bad effects on the US economy, with the sub-prime mortgage fiasco being the latest of them.
5. Because the tax code taxes savings account interest income, dividend income, capital gains income, etc., we have among the lowest savings rate in the world.
6. The tax code encourages people to go to all kinds of means to keep their assets out of the hands of the IRS. One result is a massive underground economy; the second is wealthier Americans "offshoring" their assets in offshore banking centers (OFC's) located in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Panama, Switzerland, etc. to the tune to US$10 to US$16 TRILLION.
7. Foreigners are reluctant to invest in the USA because of all the taxes on investing in the USA.
8. American companies find it more profitable to "offshore" corporate and manufacturing operations outside the USA just to keep their taxes low. Unfortunately, that also increases unemployment in the USA.
And you wonder why the very idea of a low-percentage flat tax or the FairTax consumption tax is actually gaining more and more support.