Chapter Summary: Ways to Improve the Federal Tax System

This chapter addresses changes that could make the current tax system simpler, fairer, and more efficient.

• Incremental Reform focuses on possible adjustments to the current tax system that would make tax filing simpler, have less of an adverse impact on behavior, or shift the distribution of tax burdens.
• Revenue-Raising Options enumerates tax proposals that would increase federal revenue as a means of reducing the budget deficit.
• Tax Simplification discusses why taxes are so complicated and how we might simplify them.
• National Retail Sales Tax explains a wide range of issues surrounding implementation of a national sales tax to replace one or more other federal taxes.
• Return-Free Filing examines whether the government could free taxpayers from having to fill out their own tax returns, the implications of such a change, and how return-free filing has worked in California and in other countries.