It is absolutely astounding to me that practises that are literally done elsewhere right now are (still) consistently considered impossible in the US. Complexi

It is absolutely astounding to me that practises that are literally done elsewhere right now are (still) consistently considered impossible in the US. Complexity in the tax system will be gamed by people who have the resources to do so (and those are not poor people). That means if you want a controlling force that affects everybody (e.g. to avoid runaway values in how rich individuals you are) you need simple rules that can't be gamed. In society those simple rules also have the added benefit of being more broadly accepted since they are more broadly understood. But if someone asked me to build a system that could be gamed by the rich I would aim for as much complexity in the rules as I can get away with, each piece added with a good marketing slogan, in effect resulting in the CEO paying less taxes than their poorest worker.