'Simplifying' the tax code is a priority mainly for people who make enough money to want to avoid paying taxes, and who make their money by means unorthodox enough to make avoiding taxes possible and desirable.

Christopher Hitchens, the late essayist and sot, was a man who purposefully cultivated a lot of friends of a certain type - rich, self-important, generally dim-witted and hence easy for a well-spoken Oxbridge debater to impress - and he electrified Washington D.C. society mainly by not being a completely charmless bore.

Tax expenditures for middle- and working-class Americans - like the earned income tax credit - aren't thought of as loopholes; they're just thought of as benefits.

Alex Pareene Quotes