My assertion is backed only by the evidence that the ability to handle huge volumes of data has been increasing at a far faster rate than the tax codes. Computr capacity is doubling every year or so. Tracking almost any transaction is easy.
Compliance costs are substantial but should also be falling for the same reason. And a lot of them consist of costs such as a "cost" of having a wife which no one can really afford. In other words, for the vast majority of individuals, it is a cost derived from attributing a monetary equivalent to time which would not be being reimbursed. Kinda like the "cost" of sleep.
Ironically it is precisely to reduce those costs that the withholding system was created.
If tracking transactions is so easy than it should cost almost nothing to put a nation sales tax (Fairtax) in place and run, unlike the $240 billion dollars a years wasted for U.S. citizens to be in compliance with the Federal Income Tax Code.
Thank you, this is the best arguement I have heard in support of the Fairtax in the last couple of day.
That's not why the withholding system was created, friend, You should read the words of Beardsley Runl, the man who helped bring it about in FDR's administration.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a374819d77888.htm