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Tax returns and fiscal citizenship -- What's so special about a return-based mass tax? -- Tax protests, tax resistance, and tax cheating -- Tax expenditures and fiscal citizenship -- The World War II origins of the return-based mass income tax -- The return-based mass income tax in popular culture -- Simplify, simplify

No one likes paying taxes, much less the process of filing tax returns. For years, would-be reformers have advocated replacing the return-based mass income tax with a flat tax, federal sales tax, or some combination thereof. Congress itself has commissioned studies on the feasibility of a system of exact withholding. But might the much-maligned return-based taxation method serve an important yet overlooked civic purpose?In Learning to Love Form 1040, Lawrence Zelenak argues that filing taxes can strengthen fiscal citizenship by prompting taxpayers to reflect on t.

When tax returns were prepared with pencil and paper—in an era now gone forever—Congress did not impose income tax provisions of great computational complexity on large numbers of taxpayers, in the belief that it was unreasonable to require average taxpayers (or their paid preparers) to struggle with computationally complex provisions. As return preparation software gradually replaced the pencil in recent decades, the complexity constraint weakened and eventually disappeared. Congress has responded by imposing unprecedented computational complexity on large numbers of taxpayers—primarily through the expanded scope of the alternative minimum tax and the proliferation of phase outs of credits, deductions, and exclusions. This response would not be problematic, if the only objection to computational complexity were the difficulty of performing the calculations—a difficulty overcome by the widespread adoption of software. Unfortunately, computationally complex provisions generally constitute bad tax policy, even apart from computational concerns. For taxpayers faced with a welter of computationally complex provisions, the income tax is a black box, the inner workings of which are beyond their comprehension. This undermines both the political legitimacy of the tax system and the ability of taxpayers to engage in informed tax planning. In response to the demise of the complexity constraint, argues this Essay, Congress should develop a self-imposed constraint against the enactment (or survival) of computationally complex provisions of widespread applicability.

The beginnings, 1929-1937 -- A government tax career-Part I, 1937-1947 -- A law school professor-Part I, 1947-1961 -- American Law Institute tax project-Part I, 1947-1960 -- International tax activities-Part I, 1938-1960 -- A government tax career-Part II, 1961-1969 -- A law school professor-Part II, 1969 to date -- American Law Institute tax project-Part II, 1973 to date -- International tax activities-Part II, 1969 to date -- A government tax career-Part III, 1969-1980.