That's wholly untrue. Yes, the tax preparation industry has made token donations to efforts to preserve the current tax code.

But I would argue that the failure of tax reform is not so simple. Major tax reform is a massive, massive legislative undertaking. And doing so redefines many of the basic American incentives. Having your say in tax reform is the equivalent of leaving your mark on the next 20-30 years of American society.

Suffice to say, the massive polarization of our Legislature, combined with the hyper-efficacy of Senate obstruction, and finished off with the fact that tax reform is hard to campaign on means that there is no real incentive for our legislators to reform. But sure, a token campaign contribution making up a miniscule fraction of total donations doesn't hurt...

The tax code isn't just overly complicated, it's poorly equipped for dealing with a global economy and effectively encourages you to shirk as many taxes as you can legally get away with. This is especially noticeable in the business world where you're forced to file more frequently and actively put yourself at a disadvantage if you don't exploit the loopholes to the level your competitors do.

There's a certain irony in wealthy corps/individuals being able to pay less effective taxes than the less fortunate purely because they can afford to work the system to their advantage. The only reason most of these gimmicks are possible is because the government is so damn determined to influence behavior through taxes.

> Yes, the tax preparation industry has made token donations to efforts to preserve the current tax code.

The millions Intuit alone spends annually lobbying to that end are considerably more than anything that could reasonably called a "token".

A billion dollars has already been raised in the 2014 midterms. A non-presidential year, 6 months before the election, and a billion has already flowed in.

So yes, your millions are a very tiny fraction of the money flowing in.

Wait, you say it's wholly untrue but the immediately say that it's somewhat true.

Can't disagree with the rest.

I apologize, I believe it's functionally untrue. I believe functionally that Intuit has approximately 0% effect on tax reform.

I was being glib in saying that they do have an effect, because to me a 0.01 - 0.05% level of effect is negligible.

A large cause is all the government handouts we hide in the tax code as deductions. Simplifying the tax code removes a favorite way for politicians to payoff donors.

I wonder if tax credits on mortgage payment interests is a contributing blocker to tax reform. If they got rid of it, buying and owning a house would be so much more expensive. It would make renting more worth it.

The problem is they can't dump that deduction without causing a massive discontinuity. If you get rid of it, house prices will drop instantly and incumbent owners are holding the bag in the form of their existing mortgage. So the only sane way to get rid of it is start now and phase it out over decades.