Attractive Complexity: Tax Deregulation, the Check-the-Box Election, and the Future of Tax Simplification

I. INTRODUCTION Dissatisfaction with the complexity of the income tax is nothing new.[1]Still, recent decades have seen anything but a decrease in the tax law’s complexity. The seemingly inexorable rise in complexity has attracted the attention of scholars,[2] inspired politicians[3] and, of course, frustrated taxpayers. Typically it is assumed that what puts simplicity, or at least simplification,[4]out of reach is a lack of political viability.[5] In other words, the lack…