The first law of Congressional dynamics states that Congress will delay action on any important policy as long as possible until it’s too late to pass legislation in any given two-year Congressional session.  As an illustration, the last overhaul of the federal income tax was President Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986, 31 years ago.

In his excellent post on taxes and the incidence of taxes, co-blogger Scott Sumner does not mention another important issue in taxation: deadweight loss. The deadweight loss from a tax is the part of the loss to those who bear the tax that does not go to the government. Thus the term "deadweight." (Scott's graph shows a small deadweight loss, but he does not elaborate on this.)