{"id":37913,"date":"2013-04-21T21:05:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T21:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/washington_post_robert_samuelson-the_long_odds_on_tax_reform\/"},"modified":"2013-04-21T21:05:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T21:05:23","slug":"washington_post_robert_samuelson-the_long_odds_on_tax_reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37913","title":{"rendered":"(Washington Post) Robert Samuelson&#8211;The long odds on tax reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At this time of year, when most Americans have just filed their returns, exasperation with the income tax system reaches a peak. Hardly anyone denies it&#8217;s a complex mess. In 2010, calculating their taxes cost Americans $168 billion, estimates the Taxpayer Advocate Service of the Internal Revenue Service. That&#8217;s about 15 percent of taxes collected \u201d\u201d a heavy overhead. Almost 60 percent of taxpayers pay accountants or other tax preparers. Public esteem for the tax system is low; in a 2011 Pew poll, 55 percent judged it unfair. Disaffection was fairly even politically: 47 percent among Republicans, 58 percent among Democrats and 56 percent among independents.<\/p>\n<p>So \u201ctax reform\u201d\u009d ought to be a cinch, right? Well, no.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestate.com\/2013\/04\/18\/2729253\/samuelson-the-long-odds-on-tax.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this time of year, when most Americans have just filed their returns, exasperation with the income tax system reaches a peak. Hardly anyone denies it&#8217;s a complex mess. In 2010, calculating their taxes cost Americans $168 billion, estimates the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37913\">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":[40,50,209,582,589,149,600,597,616,593,151,667,618,587,596,669,584],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-americau-s-a","category-consumerconsumer-spending","category-corporationscorporate-life","category-economy","category-housingreal-estate-market","category-laborlabor-unionslabor-market","category-office-of-the-president","category-personal-finance","category-politics-in-general","category-president-barack-obama","category-senate","category-taxes","category-the-credit-freeze-crisis-of-fall-2008the-recession-of-2007","category-the-national-deficit","category-the-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37913","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=37913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}