It's a scam, a sham and a flim-flam. It's a spit in the eye of the fundamental principle that the powers-that-be in a democratic society ought to deal directly and honestly with the people at all times.
Ah well, you may say, this is a tired old complaint. Aside from the fact that another annual tax-preparation season just now happens to be rearing its horrid head, why bring it up again?
Because the trouble, the creeping corruption within the system, doesn't just sit there. It's progressive. The evils of the tax system are significantly worse now than they were even a few years ago, and they are scheduled to get still worse.
J.K. Lasser's ''Your Income Tax 2007'' runs to 848 densely packed pages, 6 percent fatter than the 2002 volume. Sitting on the shelf next to my desk here, it's easy to mistake for an old-fashioned telephone book - and just as forbidding to imagine perusing from front to back.
The cost to all of us, rich and poor, runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year - at minimum. None of the estimates captures all the value lost in time wasted and resources expended on trying to understand, comply with, and protect ourselves from this monstrosity.
''The current tax code is very burdensome,'' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a roomful of senators just the other day, and nobody argued with him.
The deterioration from year to year is qualitative as well as quantitative. Consider deductions, for example. Not so long ago, the problem with deductions was making hair-splitting distinctions about which interest payments or on-the-job expenses were deductible and which weren't.
Now the game isn't just to identify what's deductible, but to separate above-the-line from below-the-line deductions, neither to be confused with credits. Then you must figure out what percentage of any given deduction, if any, a bunch of other variables on your tax return may actually permit you to deduct.
When you are finished with that calculation, watch out for the alternative minimum tax, which may well turn your whole carefully constructed stack of numbers on its head.
''Taxation is complicated and complex,'' says a current news release from Thomson Tax & Accounting. ''For instance, a wide variety of expenditures are commonly referred to as tax deductible. Yet this does not mean that all taxpayers can deduct them.
''Some items are deductible only if you do not claim the standard deduction; some are not deductible - or are less than fully deductible - if your income exceeds dollar thresholds; and some are deductible only to the extent they exceed a specific percentage of your income. In fact, some deductible expenses must pass through all three hoops before you can calculate how much tax savings they will actually produce for you.''
No need for comedians to joke about a system like this. It parodies itself.
Through decades of efforts at reform, there has developed a widespread sense of resignation that nothing much can be done. Life is complicated, the shoulder-shruggers say, and the tax system has to be complicated too.
A still uglier subtext: In order to produce the revenue that is needed, the system must be confusing enough to keep the great mass of taxpayers off-balance and in the dark. If the system is honest enough to permit them to see clearly what is being asked of them, they will never agree to it.
Baloney. What's really lacking is a political constituency for change. While everybody would stand to benefit, it's hard to see how. The right kind of strong, energetic leadership would be a big help.
One common argument against meaningful tax reform is that we have other, more urgent priorities that must be dealt with first. As far as I can see, there is never a time when that case can't be made.
This too rings false in the end. A simpler, saner tax system would put us in a better position to deal with all the other pressing economic and political problems of life.
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* CHET CURRIER is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at ccurrier@Bloomberg.net.
