Where have those perceptive people who make and administer this nation's tax laws been for the past couple of years? Don't they ever talk to ordinary taxpayers?
Evidently not, judging from the impression top officials gave last week that they are only now discovering what the average American learned long ago:Namely, that the landmark 1986 tax law - the most thorough overhaul of the income tax since it was enacted in 1913 - started out to simplify the law but ended up making it more complicated.
Though this discovery seems to be news to the House Ways and Means Committee, which has been holding hearings this week on the impact of the 1986 law, it should have been clear from the fact that as many Americans are buying expensive tax preparation guides now as there were three or four years ago.
Indeed, even sophisticated businessmen, able to hire top tax specialists, have found themselves burdened by new regulations that neither they nor their accountants can fathom.
For example, the 1986 law devotes hundreds of pages just to provisions intended to end tax shelters by disallowing deductions for "passive losses," or losses from paper transactions.
Other areas of great complexity include rules on dependency exemptions, personal interest deductions, pensions, fringe benefits and foreign tax credits.
So complex and confusing are some provisions that a variety of tax consultants often give a variety of answers to the same question about the 1986 law.
In response to the testimony it heard this week, the House committee is promising to make another stab at simplifying the federal income tax law. But don't start cheering yet. Every time Congress tries to simplify the tax code, it can't seem to resist the temptation to tinker with the law in ways that have nothing to do with simplification. And more such tinkering means more complexity.