Year: 1974
Type: article
Abstract: Neither "tax simplification" nor its mirror image, complexity, is aconcept that can be easily defined or measured. I know of no comprehensiveanalytic framework for these ideas, nor are there anyempirical studies supplying a "simplicity index" of particular areas oftax law and practice. Journalists often ridicule the Internal RevenueCode by pointing to lengthy involuted provisions and to definitionsthat refer the reader to other definitions that in turn compel him to goeven farther afield. A favorite example is the 554-word sentence thatmakes up Section 341(e)(I). But these statutory intricacies may in fact be of minor importance, if they are addressed to tax experts concernedwith transactions that rarely occur; and they may even clarify the law,despite their initially baffling phraseology. Sections 671-675, for example,are intricate provisions. As compared with the pre-1946 lawgoverning income-splitting trusts, however, their message is crystalclear.The statutory language was simpler in earlier years, but thetaxpayer and his adviser had to weigh the implications of hundreds ofjudicial decisions, most of which simply announced that all of therelevant facts and circumstances were to be weighed in determiningwhether the income of a trust was taxable to the grantor or to itstrustee and beneficiaries. The 1945 regulations and 1954 statutoryrules that replaced these judicial decisions were complex, but theymade it much easier to find one's way through the wilderness. On theother hand, elaborate statutory verbiage can be a source of complexityand an obstacle to simplification; I will offer some instances later inthis paper.
Source: bepress Legal Repository
Author: Bittker, Boris I
Institution: University of Miami
Language: English
Topic: Economic and Fiscal Studies
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1517203633