Everyone wants to simplify the tax code. They just want to simplify the parts other people like. We could cut out a big chunk by getting rid of farm subsidies. My wife (went to high school and college in Iowa) doesn&#x27;t think that&#x27;s acceptable. We could simplify by getting rid of all the handouts for older people (mortgage interest deduction). My parents, who save tens of thousands in taxes each year from their McMansion, don&#x27;t like that idea. I&#x27;d love to have a flat tax with no brackets. But my liberal friends like the whole progressive taxation thing. The tax code is a soup but it&#x27;s one that reflects an equilibrium of all these interests.<p>Also, the idea of government creating a complex tax code just for funsies is naive. The tax code is huge because accounting is complicated, and taxation is basically a superset of accounting. The GAAP rules are 25,000 pages. That&#x27;s probably the lower bound in how much you can simplify the tax code (without incorporating the GAAP by reference, which basically would outsource writing tax law to a private organization).