WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 27 (DPI) — If you thought the U.S. tax code was a hopeless mess,  there’s one thing that might be worse: An online discussion on reforming it.

Over the weekend, Reddit.com posted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) string hosted by a recently retired IRS professional, who is promoting books about what’s wrong with tax policy today. The bottom line? The US tax code is too complicated to fix, especially in the current political environment. And the IRS, starved by Republican lawmakers, lacks the funds to go after tax cheats and efficiently administer collection, the former agent said.

The whole online exchange left readers with little optimism that constructive reform is even possible:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2karu6/iama_28year_veteran_of_the_internal_revenue/

http://mikegreg.com/

The former agent, Mike Gregory, worked for the IRS for 28 years. When a Redditor asked what three things he would do to improve the IRS, he replied thus:

• 1) Simplify the internal revenue code – if you took 60 lines per page with no margins (that’s a lot of lines) the code is 34.5 inches high. The regulations are 3.5 times larger. That’s almost 13 feet high. Nobody can understand all of that. Congress has passed more than 4,000 code sections in the last 10 years – that’s more than 1 code section per day. When I started, I could hold the internal revenue code and the regulations in my hand! – I’ve actually got them at home.
• 2) Address issues related to inversions and international tax
• 3) Fund the IRS properly – increase funding consistent with the recommendations of the non-partisan IRS oversight board (2.3 Billion!)

Gregory said he doesn’t believe the IRS wants a complex tax code, but the agency’s constituents – lawyers and accountants, primarily – do:

I believe that the industry of tax preparers appreciates having a more complex tax code to keep them in business. I don’t believe the IRS wants a more complex tax code.

Redditors generally were suspicious of the former agent and his views that IRS wasn’t a political instrument of the people who run the government. One typical comment:

I’m a lawyer who has studied tax law and discussed this with experienced tax attorneys. My understanding of the complexity and exponential growth of the tax code is that Congress has realized it can hide a lot of its social/economic engineering agendas in the tax code without fear of much public anger because the tax code is so difficult to understand.