{"id":37832,"date":"2013-04-16T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T03:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/csm_tax_reform_why_a_kinder_simpler_tax_code_eludes_congress_so_far\/"},"modified":"2013-04-16T03:00:09","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T03:00:09","slug":"csm_tax_reform_why_a_kinder_simpler_tax_code_eludes_congress_so_far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37832","title":{"rendered":"(CSM) Tax reform: Why a kinder, simpler tax code eludes Congress, so far"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To tax reform advocates, the federal tax code is a shambling behemoth, its immense girth weighing down corporations and Jane and Joe Taxpayer alike. The code is more than 4 million words long and has been tweaked 4,680 times since 2001, or more than once a day, according to the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s National Taxpayer Advocate, whose job is to champion the poor schlubs who have to contend with the US tax system. Compliance takes more than 6 billion person-hours a year and costs $168 billion, the advocate&#8217;s office reports.<\/p>\n<p>Tax expenditures \u201d\u201c the sober name for myriad loopholes, carve-outs, and incentives in the code \u201d\u201c shield almost as much in revenue, at just over $1 trillion, as the $1.4 trillion collected each year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/DC-Decoder\/2013\/0410\/Tax-reform-Why-a-kinder-simpler-tax-code-eludes-Congress-so-far?nav=87-frontpage-spotlight\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To tax reform advocates, the federal tax code is a shambling behemoth, its immense girth weighing down corporations and Jane and Joe Taxpayer alike. The code is more than 4 million words long and has been tweaked 4,680 times since<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37832\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,589,149,168,119,617,616,593,151,618,587,584,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-corporationscorporate-life","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-globalization","category-house-of-representatives","category-office-of-the-president","category-personal-finance","category-politics-in-general","category-senate","category-taxes","category-the-u-s-government","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}