"A Certain Failure" by Richard W. Rahn (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"A Certain Failure" by Richard W. Rahn (Cato Institute: Commentary): "Do you know what the word 'income' means? My large Webster's dictionary is able to provide a clear and comprehensive definition in a mere 52 words. The shortest definition the Internal Revenue Service could provide in response to my request for its definition was 140 words - but the word income was included 10 times, missing the point that you do not include the word to be defined as part of the definition."

"[T]he income-tax code and regulations contain many inconsistent and even contradictory explicit and implicit definitions of the word income, leaving taxpayers both confused and endlessly at risk legally."

"Mr. Cohen, arguably the best tax lawyer of his day, also said he did not understand much of what was in the tax code - at that time a mere 4 million words or so, as contrasted with the more than 7 million words (almost 70,000 pages) in today's code. Last week, I was in a meeting with some of the nation's best and most experienced tax lawyers and tax economists, several of whom had served in the Treasury, and, again, there was the general lament that the tax code is so complex it is beyond their understanding and repair.

Those who claim that the government will be able to get a lot more tax revenue by increasing tax rates on the rich live in a fantasy world. Over the past 40 years, maximum income tax rates have ranged from 28 percent to 70 percent, yet tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product have been remarkably constant, ranging from a low of 16.3 to a high of 20.9 percent of gross domestic product."

"People always seem surprised that very rich people such as Warren Buffet, Sens. John Kerry, Edward M. Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pay much smaller effective tax rates than many in the middle class. One should not be shocked; the politically powerful have always protected themselves and their friends."