The late great Albert Einstein once admitted that figuring out his U.S. income tax was beyond him—he had to go to a tax consultant. “This is too difficult for a mathematician,” said Einstein. “It takes a philosopher.”
Most U.S. taxpayers, being neither mathematicians nor philosophers, are baffled, too. by the intricacies of the income tax. Unless they take the straight and narrow path of the short form and the standard deduction, even conscientious taxpayers can never be really sure when they send off their returns whether they cheated themselves or their Government. A philosopher fares no better than an Einstein. If he were heroic enough to read all 929 pages of the tax code, he would not find in them what philosophers seek: order, coherence and principle amid the seeming chaos.A Danger Point. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1958, Law Professor Mortimer Caplin argued in favor of reforms to tidy up the tax mess. “We must recognize,” he said, “the hodgepodge fashion in which special relief has been granted to various groups and how favors to one have led to many balancing favors to others. Our tax laws have become unbelievably complex. They are riddled with exceptions and preferences.” Because of the complexities and inequities of the tax code, Caplin warned, “we have reached a danger point which strongly evidences an undermining of the tax morality of large numbers of people. They appear to be developing a lethargy over tax enforcement, reminiscent of the former widespread attitude under the Volstead Act.”