A Fine Mess: A Global Quest For A Simpler, Fairer, And More Efficient Tax System, by T.R. Reid

One can tell a lot about this book if one knows a little bit about the author–which admittedly, I didn’t until looking at the back sleeve. This sleeve helpfully informs the reader that the author is a longtime correspondent for the WaPo, a commentator for NPR, has been a correspondent for PBS documentaries, and has written approvingly about Europe and its bureaucratic and corrupt ways. Given this background, the rest of the book practically writes itself. It is perhaps ironic, given the author’s persistent misrepresentation of the biblical position of taxation and property rights of the Bible that the author both notes that anyone can get whatever they want from the Bible (including the author, it must be noted but is not admitted), that the author shows the most hostility towards the two forms of taxation that are ordained in Israel: a proportional tax that resembles nothing more than the flat tax that the author views with disdain, and a regressive but very modest head tax for census purposes that demonstrates the equality of people under God, and makes poor people pay correspondingly for that equality. The author seems to be in favor of just about every other tax he meets other than the corporate tax which encourages tax dodges and financial shenanigans which the author properly sees as a bad thing.

This is no hyperbole. The author takes his tour of taxes and finds taxation to be something he glories in. He bemoans the tendency of Americans to be reflexively hostile towards government expenditures to the extent that it is politically possible to support socially desirable ends through tax deductions rather than tax increases. The author bemoans the hostility of both main parties of the United States to the VAT, which the author views as some sort of heaven-sent revenue generating machine for corrupt governments that the author wants the United States to emulate. The author’s view of justice is such that he cannot see any taxation system as just unless it somehow squeezes the wealthy at every turn–with death taxes, luxury taxes, financial transaction taxes (labeled as FAT taxes), as well as punitive rates of personal taxation, and a near complete removal of all tax deductions. That the author recognizes the political challenge of this is not in any way a discouragement to the author, given that he proposed his ridiculous and completely impossible tax plans as a proposal for the tax code of 2018, a year that came and went without any tax reform of notice. Given the political gridlock of the contemporary age, it seems entirely unlikely that the author’s plans would be brought to fruition any time soon, and good riddance for that.

This book is a bit more than 250 pages, and it begins with a prologue that assumes (not correctly) that the tax code is reformed every 32 years, giving the author a deadline of 2018 to propose for his own tax code to be adopted by Congress. This is followed by a look at the United States (and other nations of the world, whose tax policies the author views too highly) as being policy laboratories (1). This is followed by several chapters that deal with the author’s discussion of various views of taxation, including America’s interest in low effort, low collection taxes (which sounds reasonably just by the world’s standards) (2), posits what increased taxes are good for (3), and encourages taxes that are broad-based but have low rates (though not low enough to meet biblical standards of less than a tithe, it must be admitted) (4). The author talks about the problem of tax dodges (5), pours scorn upon the flat tax for not providing enough revenue for leftist spendthrift governments to waste on social programs (6), seeks to provide the solution for taxation issues (7), as well as the persistent efforts of businesses and wealthy people to avoid paying ruinously high taxes (8) of the kind that the author supports. The author turns his attention to a variety of possible tax regimes that are practiced around the world (9) or that could be, devotes a whole chapter to the Panama Papers (10), urges simplification of the tax code (11), and looks at the VAT as a money machine that ought to be speedily adopted (12). The author then closes with an epilogue about his nightmarish internal revenue code of 2018, as well as thanks, notes, and an index.