Reliance Interests. We cannot get anywhere without starting from somewhere. Jenna, Russia and Iraq had an opportunity to re-constitute their whole revenue system. This opportunity certainly had some costs…social upheaval, war etc. Tax reformers in Russia had nearly a blank slate. That is, they had a system that had been in place less than a decade when they went flat. Here, we have cobbled together tax advantages for all manner of activity and each advantage has a strong interest — a reliance — on maintaining the screwed up system in order to protect their own piece of the pie. The lesson is to get things right the first time…once they become entrenched the costs of change are extremely high.