One writer has wonderfully laid the groundwork for a discussion on revising the Internal Revenue Code. He wrote:

"The Internal Revenue Code is arguably the most ambitious social engineering project ever attempted in human history, and without doubt one of the most counterproductive. History will regard it as a Great Pyramid scale monument to unintended consequences. Every provision added with the intent of creating an incentive to stimulate some desired activity results in both attempts to use it purely to escape taxation, and/or creates other unanticipated and possibly deleterious "industries" economically justified only by the tax incentive. This, in turn, causes additional provisions to be enacted, ad infinitum or asymptotically close."

He noted that in 2004 the Code contained 3,453,728 words on 7,694 pages (with 60 lines per page) and 23,622 cross-references. Obviously, the Code has grown since then, because of attempts to shorten and simplify it.

I once saw a Christmas tree with so many ornaments that the branches were invisible. That is the case with the tax law. In later Notes, I will discuss some of the problems we confront in trying to simplify the Code.