How does that work?

As many tax bloggers have noted, the White House has requested ideas for the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to develop options for tax reform.

The blog includes this note:

The mandate to the PERAB is NOT to recommend a new tax system. They are to consider ideas on tax simplification, better enforcement of tax law, and reforming corporate taxes and to present the pros and cons of potential tax options... So be mindful of their constraints when submitting ideas.

I struggle to understand how we can get real tax simplification without recommending a new tax system. Maybe it's that my interpretation of the words "simplification" and "tax system" are not consistent with the government's. Because the way I see it, we can't get simplification without seriously revamping the system.

As often happens, I find myself comparing this situation to medicine (which just might have something to do with being married to a doctor). If we only change a code section here, or a regulation there, we're just treating symptoms and not the disease.

Just like when we keep adding new credits and deductions, we keep trying to cure our economic ailments with more and more medication. And from the stories I hear, more medication is not always the best answer! It often makes things worse.

In this stupor of mine, I cannot think of a recommendation to give the White House that would feel like anything more than treating a minor symptom of a dreadful disease. How depressing.