More than half the population lives on the coasts. Most of them are "regular people", too.
The problem with our tax code is the same as the problem with the rest of our laws: pandering politicians push through complex and expensive trash because it makes either their constituents or their donors happy.
For taxes specifically, normal people have complex taxes because of the dozens of deductions and credits that hide the handouts (to the wealthy and the poor alike) built into the system. In a sane tax code, there would be no standard deduction or mortgage deduction or earned income tax or alternative minimum tax. There would be a set of tax brackets (adjusted to compensate for the loss of all the complexity) and very little else.
Of course in a sane system, the government would just file your taxes and send you a statement along with a refund or a bill. They have all the relevant information with the exception of some itemized stuff they can't know about, but they could just eliminate that and simplify.
And once again we reach the conclusion that corporate lobbying and donations are the "root of all evil" in American politics, and everything is broken because of it. Larry Lessig has been right all along when he said this needs to be fixed before anything else [1]. Because once this is fixed, everything else should be a lot easier and a lot more in tune with what the People want [2].
It's just so easy and so cheap for corporations to buy votes right now. Why wouldn't they do it, when the upside is billions of dollars and there's no penalty for it? They can literally buy a vote with a few thousand dollars "donation". Set a limit of $200 (maybe $500 for presidential candidates) political donation per year per person and imprison (6-36 months) anyone who dares to do it any other way, fast and furious, no matter who he is, wealthy billionaire or former president. It's the only way to escape this corruption in the system.
Also, I think the U.S. would need a special agency whose sole mission is to look for this type of corruption. In this case, "mission creep" and the purpose of maintaining their jobs would work in the People's favor. The more the agency would do (catch corrupt donors or politicians), the more it could justify its existence. Similar agencies have seen a lot of success in Europe, trying to catch corrupt politicians.
Reformers have been begging to "fix the broken system" regarding lobbying for hundreds of years in this country. Lobbying as a legalized form of bribery is a deeply-ingrained part of the political and economic system the US is rooted in, or in other words it's another dimension of capitalism. Academics and journalists have been writing about this for two centuries and not once has substantial change occurred.
They're lobbying for the government to stay out of the auto filing business, not to keep the tax code over complex. I think the government should auto file but simplifying the tax code would be a huge improvement without that.
The problem with our tax code is the same as the problem with the rest of our laws: pandering politicians push through complex and expensive trash because it makes either their constituents or their donors happy.
For taxes specifically, normal people have complex taxes because of the dozens of deductions and credits that hide the handouts (to the wealthy and the poor alike) built into the system. In a sane tax code, there would be no standard deduction or mortgage deduction or earned income tax or alternative minimum tax. There would be a set of tax brackets (adjusted to compensate for the loss of all the complexity) and very little else.
Of course in a sane system, the government would just file your taxes and send you a statement along with a refund or a bill. They have all the relevant information with the exception of some itemized stuff they can't know about, but they could just eliminate that and simplify.