Unless you rewrite the law to make the code the spec. Indeed, code is probably a better medium for unambiguously communicating calculations.
> 2. France does provide an executable encoding of the tax code, TFA is literally a compiler for that.
But other countries might not do so.
> 4. You can use OpenFisca to encode your own country's tax law, or lobby for your country to encode its tax law there (https://openfisca.org/en/packages/).
This would be amazing!
Ambiguity and obfuscation are usually intentional. Legislators and individual citizens do not necessarily have the same interests. This is why omnibus bills exist.
And they are updated quite frequently and implemented quite programmatically!
But the laws also remain ambiguous because the world is an ambiguous place with a lot of edge and corner cases with unforeseen knock on effects.
That said, one would hope
1) the tax code would be one of the least open-to-creative-interpretation parts of the system
2) the IRS equivalent could actually produce this code, rather than legislators
1. It would not, the tax law remains the spec.
2. France does provide an executable encoding of the tax code, TFA is literally a compiler for that.
3. France started to do so circa 2016 (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/egovernment/document/...) after losing a FOIA-type case, though feelers had already been sent as a governmental agency (CAS) is at the root of OpenFisca (https://openfisca.org/), and by then the prime minister's data sharing and coordination office (etalab) had started using and contributing to it (https://openfisca.org/doc/manifest-history.html)
4. You can use OpenFisca to encode your own country's tax law, or lobby for your country to encode its tax law there (https://openfisca.org/en/packages/).