<i>"reducing friction increases jobs as it not only frees up people who have to navigate the complexity - ie the tax accountants and lawyers to doing something more productive"</i><p>Har.  Yes...because if we reduce the complexity of the tax code, somehow, droves lawyers and accountants (who <i>chose</i> to do what they do, and spent <i>years</i> training to do it) are going to switch to "productive" jobs.<p>I get it.  You don't like lawyers and accountants.  But I think you need to separate your judgments of these jobs from the reality that these people do productive work that is clearly valuable -- even outside of the need for tax code compliance.  Lawyers and accountants are not going away.<p><i>"I find it remarkable that you don't think there's an increasing cost to this compliance."</i><p>I didn't say that.  I said that small businesses don't spend that much on compliance relative to all other factors, and that I'm therefore skeptical of the claim that reducing tax code complexity will increase jobs in any substantive way.