Tax reform never survives because there is no consensus on how it should be fixed. Some folks think we should "simplify" by eliminating deductions - things like home mortgage interest, child care expenses, medical expenses & health insurance premiums. Other folks think we should "simplify" by eliminating corporate tax breaks & subsidies, and change how we tax things like stock trades & financial instruments. Still others think we should scrap the whole system and just impose a flat tax. Everyone benefits a little under the current system, and no one wants to trade the devil in the details of a "reformed" system for the deal they've got now.
The ideas that are tenable can't be popular enough to succeed (since we're all just temporarily disenfranchised millionaires, and it could always be worse), and the ones that are simplest aren't palatable once all the details are worked out. So we do nothing, because that's easy.
The ideas that are tenable can't be popular enough to succeed (since we're all just temporarily disenfranchised millionaires, and it could always be worse), and the ones that are simplest aren't palatable once all the details are worked out. So we do nothing, because that's easy.