Major-party politicians avoid tax simplification almost as aggressively as the rich avoid taxation, argue the Reason Roundtable panelists.
by Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie
Reason.com
Asked about The New York Times’ novella-length article analyzing his last 18 years of federal income tax returns, President Donald Trump said: “It’s fake news. It’s totally fake news. Made up, fake.”
That hasn’t stopped people from discussing Trump’s inventive accounting, to a chorus of sputtered outrage by Trump’s legion of critics, the vast majority of whom miss a simple point: The tax code is a big, complicated mess because major-party politicians—including those Republicans who insincerely promise to fit the entire form “on a postcard”—like it just fine that way, and voters do not punish them for perennially exacerbating the exasperating status quo.