That simplistic system is what's really goofy.
I've been hearing that for decades. A key marketing element of House Republicans’ repeated tax reform push was the notion that they would write a tax code so simple you could fill out your taxes on a postcard. We heard that from Paul Ryan and we heard it from conservatives in the Reagan Era. Ryan said, “
We will consolidate the existing seven brackets into three, double the standard deduction, and simplify things to the point that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard. This, instead of the 1040 form. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Here is Ryan's postcard tax form:
Note that on line 3’s it reference to “specified savings plans” is completely punting on the question of what the specified savings plans are.
The other is that in lines 9, 10, and 11, the form achieves simplicity by saying nothing at all about what the relevant credits are or who is eligible to claim them and in what quantity.
To make either of these provisions work, you would, in practice, need to work with some additional forms. The postcard would just be a starting point. The existing IRS tax compliance process essentially arrives at the same conclusion in reverse. For people with simple tax situations that don’t involve claiming these credits or making contributions to special tax-preferred accounts, you
already don’t need to fill out Form 1040. Instead you use Form 1040 EZ