Wall Street Journal: The 30-Cent Tax Premium

from WSJ a very good article by Arthur Laffer

Tax compliance employs more workers than Wal-Mart, UPS, McDonald's, IBM and Citigroup combined.

In a study published last week by the Laffer Center, my colleagues Wayne
Winegarden, John Childs and I estimate that these costs alone are a
staggering $431 billion annually. This is a cost markup of 30 cents on
every dollar paid in taxes. And this is not even a complete accounting
of the costs of tax complexity.

I absolutely agree with Professor Laffer.  rationalizing the tax policy and calculation regardless of tax levels and left leaning or right leaning policy makes tremendous sense. Allowing the complexity of current tax structure to remain so costly to calculate does not benefit the country in any way.