Congress Built the Tax-Code Monster

My article in the National Review, just in time for Tax Day 2026.

In case you aren’t a subscriber to NR, I am sharing my article here that was published earlier today:

Here’s how to fix overcomplexity at the IRS and give Americans a tax system they can believe in.

The Internal Revenue Service remains one of the federal government’s most critical yet chronically undermined agencies. Its core mission — administering tax laws with fairness and efficiency — faces its greatest obstacle not from internal mismanagement, but from the staggering complexity Congress has built into the Internal Revenue Code.

Decades of legislative additions have created a maze of overlapping rules, conflicting definitions, and compliance obligations so dense that even experienced professionals struggle to apply them consistently. This structural flaw generates errors throughout the system: Taxpayers file incorrectly despite good-faith efforts, preparers provide flawed guidance, and IRS personnel interpret provisions unevenly. Countless mistakes go unnoticed due to the agency’s resource shortages, resulting in selective enforcement, inconsistent compliance, and profound damage to public confidence in the tax system’s equity and reliability.

Congress holds primary responsibility for this mess, yet it continues to worsen the problem through irresponsible legislation.

Enacted last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) exemplifies the pattern. Presented as broad-based relief, the law makes permanent many provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increases standard deductions, and introduces populist exemptions — including no tax on tips (with a $25,000 cap and income phase-outs), no tax on overtime pay, additional deductions for seniors ($6,000, but only through 2028), expanded child tax credits, and new savings vehicles labeled “Trump Accounts.”

While politically attractive, these features add significant complexity to filing one’s taxes: intricate eligibility tests, phase-out calculations, additional reporting mandates, and retroactive modifications requiring IRS to overhaul forms, issue guidance, and educate millions of filers.

Rather than streamlining the code, the OBBB layers targeted carveouts onto an already convoluted framework, inflating error-prone areas and driving deficits higher by trillions, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office and independent analysts. This approach substitutes fiscal discipline with gimmicks — distorting economic incentives, granting unequal advantages, and undermining the principle of equal treatment under the law.

The fallout is starkly visible in the IRS’s current operations. Severe workforce reductions — roughly 27 percent since early 2025, including substantial drops in key filing-season divisions — have pushed the agency to extreme measures. The IRS is now involuntarily reassigning employees from human resources, information technology, and administrative roles — many lacking any direct tax experience — to frontline duties such as answering taxpayer inquiries and processing returns.

Hiring remains woefully inadequate, with only a small fraction of authorized positions filled and training periods of up to 80 days delaying readiness. Backlogs of unprocessed items have climbed to approximately 2 million cases, reflecting significant increases from prior periods, while phone service targets have been lowered from 85 percent to 70 percent.

Internal assessments highlight the risk of dramatically higher error rates, as reassigned staff lack the expertise to detect fraud, resolve complex issues, or adequately support small businesses with notoriously complicated tax filings. Specialized functions, including ethics oversight and recruitment, have been depleted to fill these gaps, further impairing the agency’s long-term capacity.

This crisis represents more than a temporary strain; it is a deliberate structural failure. Congress crafts ever more intricate laws and selective relief packages, then underfunds enforcement through persistent salary limitations and aggressive recent cuts.

The result? Major corporations continue to benefit from dedicated, experienced auditors, while individuals and small businesses encounter less-qualified or temporarily reassigned personnel, despite facing comparable complexity. The OBBB’s new requirements and retroactive elements exacerbate the strain exactly when resources are thinnest, guaranteeing prolonged delays, widespread inaccuracies, and growing taxpayer frustration.

Meaningful correction to the tax code cannot rely solely on internal adjustments or unproven technology. Genuine progress requires principled congressional intervention.

First, Congress ought to prioritize targeted simplification in persistently high-error domains — the Earned Income Credit, international tax obligations, and the fresh complexities introduced by OBBB provisions — by eliminating redundancies and unnecessary phaseouts.

Second, it should reform federal pay structures to enable recruitment and retention of skilled professionals, correcting the imbalance that disadvantages ordinary taxpayers.

Third, it should commit resources to specialized training for agents serving individuals and small businesses, ensuring competence amid ongoing complexity.

Fourth, it ought to implement enforceable case-management standards: prompt acknowledgment of correspondence, defined resolution timelines, and transparent communication to eliminate indefinite delays.

And fifth, Congress should strengthen partnerships with professional organizations, such as state CPA societies, to foster mutual understanding and practical improvements between the IRS and the practitioner community.

The IRS is indispensable to sustaining limited government, yet it cannot function effectively when Congress treats the tax code as an instrument of political influence and the agency as expendable. Absent serious simplification, proper resourcing, and restored accountability, the system faces collapse — further jeopardizing individual liberty, equal justice, and fiscal prudence.

American taxpayers deserve a tax system worthy of their confidence and trust. They’re currently not getting anything close to that.