Every one of us pays taxes and they in turn affect our lives. We have all kinds of taxes, federal, state, local and what not and we have to pay them, unless we want the IRS knocking down our door or worse, being incarcerated for evasion of taxes. Every politician promises us that these will be simplified but in the end, they just end up adding more to the tax code. The thing has been edited approximately 14,000 times in the last 20 years with the addition of 3 million new words. All this and ironically, since the independence, there has been an ongoing debate on what role the tax should play in our lives and what the proper tax code should be. The debates however seem to be going nowhere since currently we are dealing with the country’s most complicated tax code ever. The king among these complexities is – the Federal Income Tax.

The federal income tax, with its 95 years of editing has turned out to be such a headache that many of us are now demanding for its simplification or directly, removal; however, I have a feeling that the latter is impossible. It has become so complex over the years that even after filing most of us are still confused whether we have done it right or not. The topic of income tax has been used and reused over the years from political handouts to vote amassing gimmicks and yet, at the end of the day it still remains a burden on us. It has thus turned into one of the most controversial issues of our time.
The federal income tax is just the tip of the iceberg, during the course of the day, we experience taxation and sometimes we don’t even know it, be it buying something or selling something. Maybe, one of these days the debate will intensify and some of us or our representatives will step up to straighten out the tax system. Till then, willingly or unwillingly we still have to bear the burden of taxation.