I expect it is _much_ harder than you think it is.

I didn't think it's easy in practice at all. Frankly, I don't think it's politically feasible, even.

the people with money prefer being able to employ someone to essentially skip paying altogether.

But if they couldn't - because there are no exceptions and loopholes - society would be better off.

I think it's about as easy as writing bug-free software. And I can count the number of non-trivial pieces of software that are likely to be bug-free on one hand.

I don't agree with that whatsoever.

If you want to use a the software analogy it's advocating for using a simple monolith you can maintain with <10 people vs a distributed micro service architecture you're working on with hundreds of devs and has countless non essential features which can break the spirit of the system if used in conjunction.

Drafting a simple tax system is easy. The thing that would be borderline impossible is getting it passed into law because of vested interests

I would agree and it’s what we should be aiming for. As it is people are just throwing up their hands “what can you do”. Well close all the loopholes for one. I would go as far as to say the vast majority of the loopholes are just grift in one form or another. Some pork barrel BS is the rest (and I think these should be gotten rid of too).

I’m actually in favor of removing all charity exemptions too. They are just used by rich people to spend our money (the taxes they owe) on pet projects depriving everybody of that income.

> our money (the taxes they owe)

I'm all for removing loopholes where it's possible. However

- It's not "our money". It's money that, we a society, feel validated in taking from members of our society to pay for things that make our society better. But it is, in no way, "our money". We're taking it from people, at force, because we believe it's worth it.

- The only taxes that are "owed" are the ones defined by the rules (laws); pretty much by definition. If the rule doesn't say they owe it, then they don't owe it.

Although you could argue that all money is our money, if "our" means our society and government and collectively all of us. It exists by social agreement, as do all the rules around it that mean some have more and some have less.

To have a tax sytem with no loopholes would almost certainly require having no credits or deductions. I actually think there's something to that idea, but politically it's an absolute non-starter: taxpayers love the credits and deductions they have now and don't want to give them up, and governments love using them to shape policy and don't want to give up that particular tool in the toolchest.

One of the quirks of the current system is that subsidies are pitched as decreases to what one owes in taxes. There would be more transparency (but more overhead) if everyone paid full sticker price for taxes and then the govt separately gave money to the groups whose behaviors it wanted to encourage or whose challenges it wanted to help with (or fined the ones whose behaviors it wanted to discourage). This would not be feasible either politically. But it would bring transparency and clarity.

One way the government wins with the current method is when the non-refundable tax credit is greater than the amount you owe in taxes.

> Really, a simplified tax system without such should be the goal

Yes, it should be, because in addition to complex tax systems introducing loopholes and exceptions, they also become more complex to collect.

If taxes were simple and straightforward, you would sink an entire industry in the US. There's a whole money pit around just getting money from people to their government. That's money you could, instead, be getting as taxes.