Simple is Beautiful

Earlier this month, as many Harvard students asked for extensions on midterm assignments, countless Americans dealt with a deadline of their own: April 15th. All over the country, taxpayers hustled through piles of incomprehensible paperwork, a chore not unlike the problem sets in quantum mechanics many of Cambridge’s student inhabitants have to tackle.

Of course, the Internal Revenue Service does have a role to play in the U.S. economy. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, surely welcomes the annual jump in demand for anti-migraine pills and other tranquilizers that anticipate Tax Day’s arrival. Perhaps the streets are safer with people locked up in their rooms reading bureaucratic gibberish, filing forms, or waiting in enormous lines at a post office.

But even these happy consequences would fail to justify the aggregate 6.5 billion hours spent preparing taxes in the United States every year, a clear symptom of excessive red tape. Every citizen should have an option of filing income taxes on a simple form. Sen. Fred Thompson’s ill-fated presidential bid mentioned specifically this necessary change in its policy platform (yes, he had a platform). Following Thompson’s lead, the Giuliani campaign took up this cause. It would be regrettable if these candidates’ mutual call for thorough tax reform fell into oblivion with their White House aspirations.

The former Republican senator from Tennessee may have adopted his view from a trend abroad. In Eastern Europe, for example, nine countries have already adopted some form of a flat tax. Thompson advocated a similar system: individuals would pay 10 percent on income below $50,000 and 25 percent on the rest. With this quasi-flat tax and the current tax remaining as an option (to be phased out), unchecked loopholes could be closed, and both administrative expenses and general confusion would diminish, while compliance increased. (At least, this has been the Eastern European experience.)

For the U.S. government, sensible tax reform could be a way to repair an image that has begun to suffer at home after years of degradation abroad. According to a recent Gallup Poll, the percentage of people who do not trust the government at all on domestic issues has doubled since May 2000. This unprecedented loss of public confidence might be reversed with a judicious rewrite of the tax code—certainly an excruciating prospect for many at the top of the political world.

The Global Competitiveness Report, published by the World Economic Forum, states that the top three obstacles to doing business in the United States are high tax rates, stringent tax regulations, and government bureaucracy. Even France does (relatively) better in these areas, according to local businessmen who responded to the survey. The clear conclusion is this: The American government has only been impeded by a tax code too Byzantine and a collection process too demanding for efficiency or global viability.

As such, the election seems to present an ideal opportunity to start from scratch, beginning at the most mundane level. It begins with a recognition of the hidden minimalist beauty of straightforward IRS paperwork. One could argue about the “optimal” level and structure of taxation, but the general direction of our tax legislation must be the one toward less complexity. Fred Thompson’s proposal may need to be fine-tuned, but it would be a crushing disappointment if the country missed an opportunity to reform a clumsy tax system that only hinders competition with other national economies.

Taxpayers should be treated with decency: To assume that the entire nation holds law or economics degrees is not only practically problematic and costly, but hardly good manners. As voters, Americans tend to keep their economic interests in mind when they shop for the right candidate. All presidential hopefuls should realize that tax reform is essential for the country’s success—and could be the key to their own.


Jan Zilinsky ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is an economics concentrator in Mather House.