When looking at effective tax rates, one might want to include the cost for all the experts employed to get to the difference between nominal and effective tax

When looking at effective tax rates, one might want to include the cost for all the experts employed to get to the difference between nominal and effective tax rate, and the brain drain these careers impose on more productive disciplines. But you will have a hard time finding a country where people are not convinced that their tax system is the worst, so maybe the US is not particularly bad in that way either. The observation that a complicated makes the big guy part a lower effective rate than the small guy should be much more popular, I wish someone established a good name for it.