> Instead of trying to further complicate those laws to outlaw a few arcane tax strategies (likely in vain; more complexity likely leads to more arcane loopholes) we should be simplifying our laws.

The issue is that the complexity of the tax laws are a feature, not a bug. Each of those subsidies, exceptions, tweaks, hiccups, and exemptions is a payout to the members of the winning coalition in our electoral system. “Simple” tax laws would indicate an unresponsiveness by the government to the interests of the governed, by virtue of the fact that the governed have complex interests. Analyses that start and stop at “simple or complex” are thus doomed to be fruitless.