The General Accounting Office reports that 47 percent of befuddled callers to the IRS receive inaccurate information. Each year, the IRS finds out that it has made 10 million computational errors. But lest anyone imagine that IRS workers are hired for their imbecility, consider Money magazine's little experiment. Money asked 45 professional tax preparers to calculate a hypothetical family's tax return. The experts gave 45 different answers.
Computers can map our genes and put landers on Mars.
You can almost smell the circuits cooking as artificial intelligence grapples with a host of contradictory rules. The tax code is a hopeless maze because politicians have made it so. When tax policy becomes a snarling nightmare like this, you're beyond a trim here and a trim there. You need a silver bullet. Consider the many beauties of a flat tax.