Tax Code......The Growing Complexity

[Elrod]

Number of Pages Required To Record U.S. Federal Tax Code, 2011 = 72,178

Number of Pages Required To Record U.S. Federal Tax Code, 2012 = 74,564

Number of Pages Required To Record U.S. Federal Tax Code, 2013 = 77,030

................Number of Pages Required To Record U.S. Federal Tax Code, 1985 = 30,980...............

What a waste of trees......

Or maybe a great contract for, Dunder Mifflin

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/03/growing-complexity-of-us-federal-tax.html#.UZqq6thJtR0

[Catherine]

"The power to tax, once conceded, knows no limit: it continues until it destroys."

Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819

[Guest Taxed]

Guess who pays to keep the code complicated?

Guess who has direct access to house ways and means committee tax writing staff??

Certainly not you and me!

[Catherine]

Ever MORE reason to force the federal behemoth back inside its Constitutional limits! Perversions of the 14th Amendment have given the "rights" of natural persons to corporations. Those perversions must be rejected and nullified. That gets corporate money out of politics. Who has that power? The States and the People, see the 9th and 10th Amendments (plus various of the Federalist Papers).

[Richcpaman]

The interesting thing?

That isn't how big the code actually is. According to James Maule, its about 400,000 words, not 4 million.

http://mauledagain.blogspot.com/

The 4 million comes from all the old stuff that is there for the roadmap. Meaning, if the code section was created in 1952, you have that language, and then you have every change to that section, and all the links to other changes over the years till now. He gives the example of Code Sec 168, ACRS Depreciation. 24 pages are the actual code, now, and 52 more pages are amending texts and background.

Big difference.

Just like the Constitution. Its what? Six or seven pages? But with every law that Congress has passed and the courts have interpeted it has to be MILLIONS of pages of amending, clarifying and background information. But we do not count that....

Rich

[Guest Taxed]

I am all for getting corporate money out of politics. That is why I support campaign finance reform in a serious way. Plus i do check that box for public funding of election on 1040 and encourage my clients to do so also.

[Jack from Ohio]

Taxed, is your house painted red?

[Guest Taxed]

Blue

[Max W]

Look at how it all started, with only 404 pages of code.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--1913.pdf

[Guest Taxed]

All of us would be out of the tax prep business!

[jainen]

>>Number of Pages<<

This has been a popular whine for decades. So it grew three or four percent last year. Big deal! That's the same increase cited this morning in another thread in this forum (More taxpayers file from home) for self-filing electronically. Apparently a bigger tax code isn't harder; it's easier. Because even though we have more data, we have even more capacity for data processing. Computers make number of pages irrelevant.

Sure, our world is more complicated. Used to be, when you drove across a bridge you paid the toll. Now, http://www.goldengate.org/tolls/tollpaymentchoices.php , you pre-pay, send it in, run an account, phone or on-line, even at a booth--just not when you actually cross the bridge.

[FLORIDA TAX MAN]

Well maybe if the Tax Code was written in English it would not be so big.

[kcjenkins]

Well, while we wish for some change that makes life better, how about a law that there can be NO MORE LAWS, WE HAVE ENOUGH LAWS. So what that means is, for any new law you want to pass, you have to repeal and totally eliminate some old law. (Of course, I'd prefer That you had to eliminate 2 old fo every new, myself, because I think we have WAY TOO MANY NOW. When we got down to half as many, then it could go to 1 for 1. LOL )

[Gail in Virginia]

And as long as we are dreaming, could we also require that if a law is so obscure it cannot be understood by an intelligent high school graduate, it cannot be passed?

[kcjenkins]

OK by me, but lawyers would actually love that, because the simpler the law, the more ways they can argue it should be 'interpreted'. LOL