Death and Taxes

This only deals with Taxes, but Taxes are the death of job creation and GDP growth.  So I am sitting here watching the NCAA tournament (go Illini...) and flipping to the local Washington State legislature special session.  Today they are debating E2SSB 6143, this is a tax law which adjusts excise taxes in the state.  (Don't try to read it, it is huge and convoluted.)

So the most obvious thing I can see from this is that this is just a huge mess of taxes.  I found a website from 2003 labeling all the major excise taxes in Washington State.  Notice how convoluted all of this is.  So I am watching the debate about how this is going to help close a budget hole and how it will keep people employed.  It is obvious that there is a lot of idiots on both sides of the argument.

Why do people think they can positively affect the economy or services by tweaking the tax code?  It is some kind of enormous hubris that they have to think that they can make these tweaks and accomplish their goals.  All that happens is that the mess businesses and force realignments in staffing.  I have even seen that companies buy derivatives to hedge against tax law changes.  When will the politicians learn that a simpler tax code is better?  I know of no people who genuinely want to cheat on taxes, most just have so much trouble walking the tax code to pay all of their taxes.  If I ever get audited it will be because the tax code is too messed up for an intelligent person (me) to understand it, and my taxes are not (very) complicated.  We really need simpler tax codes in the world.  It would help everyone.  No longer would people need to pay others to do their taxes and that money can be reinvested in productive ways.  So frustrating.  I want someone to go in and be like, we are done making policy and social changes through the tax code.  I mean look at the mortgage deduction.  Case and point.  The taxes mess people's calculation of the real cost of owning a house and at the same time it makes it more expensive to rent.  So dumb.

Simple Taxes people, Simple Taxes.