“The accounts of the United States ought to be, and may be made, as simple as those of a common farmer, and capable of being understood by a common farmer.” - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1796.
Our current tax code runs 7 millions words and growing.
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for the multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for the increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.” - Thomas Jefferson, to Elbridge Gerry, 1799.