HARD TO ARGUE: Taxpayer Advocate Says Tax Code is “Unconscionable Burden,” Suggests Junking the AMT.

If there’s one word that appears over and over in National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen’s 2012 Annual Report to Congress, it’s “burden” and variations thereof. A quick search found 25 repetitions of “burden,” “burdens” or “burdensome” just in the executive summary (PDF), not counting the table of contents (it’s a long executive summary). Notably, she says in the chapter on the complexity of the tax code (PDF), “the existing tax code inflicts significant, even unconscionable, burden on taxpayers, and Congress could alleviate much of that burden by vastly simplifying the tax code.”

Indeed.