George Will‘s latest Newsweek column offers us this nugget:

The IRS says Americans spend 7.6 billion hours (about the number of
hours North Carolinians work) and $193 billion on compliance with the
baroque tax code.

“Radically reducing this appalling waste” is one of the benefits from a reform proposal Will touts. 

Now, with the Bush tax cuts less than seven months from expiration, the recovery still fragile, and unsustainable deficits looming, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) are striding onto the dark and bloody ground of tax policy, which their proposal would improve. That is faint praise because the tax code is like daytime television?almost anything done to it would improve it. But the Wyden-Gregg proposal deserves robust praise.

Their approach is orthodox?pay for lower rates by broadening the base, and do that by eliminating most of the almost 10,000 complexities (deductions, credits, and other preferences) that distort the economic decisions of individuals and businesses. Individuals and couples with incomes up to $200,000 would do better, or no worse, under Wyden-Gregg than under current law. Wyden-Gregg would reduce the number of income-tax brackets to three?15, 25, and 35 percent?and would cut the corporate tax rate, currently the second highest in the industrial world (it is lower than Japan?s), to 24 percent. More than 95 percent of small businesses?those with gross annual receipts of less than $1 million, which are crucial to creating jobs?would be allowed to expense all equipment and inventory costs in a single year.

Some of these ideas might sound similar to those who’ve read Roy Cordato’s prescription for tax reform in North Carolina.