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45 Tax L. Rev. 7 (1989-1990)
Tax Complexity and the Tax Practitioner

handle is hein.journals/taxlr45 and id is 19 raw text is: Essay Tax Complexity and the Tax Practitioner* JAMES S. EUSTICE* Even as long as four decades ago, it was a fact well known by the tax bar in general, and by an extraordinarily fine judge, in particular, that the tax law was indeed a complicated area. There is a quote by Judge Learned Hand that is most appropriate in this regard: In my own case the words of such an act as the Income Tax, for example, merely dance before my eyes in a meaningless proces- sion: cross-reference to cross-reference, exception upon excep- tion-couched in abstract terms that offer no handle to seize hold of-leave in my mind only a confused sense of some vi- tally important, but successfully concealed, purport, which it is my duty to extract, but which is within my power, if at all, only after the most inordinate expenditure of time. I know that these monsters are the result of fabulous industry and ingenu- ity, plugging up this hole and casting out that net, against all possible evasion; yet at times I cannot help recalling a saying of William James about certain passages of Hegel: that they were no doubt written with a passion of rationality; but that one can- not help wondering whether to the reader they have any signifi- cance save that the words are strung together with syntactical correctness. 1 That language was uttered in reference to the 1939 Code, which was almost childlike in its simplicity when compared to the modem ver- sion of our statute. The new story on the complexity scene is that a recent former Secretary of the Treasury said that things were getting out * This article originally appeared in the September 1976 issue of The California CPA Quarterly. It is reprinted with the permission of The California Society or CPAs. The text is basically unchanged, but for this republication, the author has added abbreviated footnotes referencing the more dramatic changes since 1976. ** Gerald L. Wallace Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. I Hand, Thomas Walter Swann, 57 Yale L.J. 167, 169 (1947). 7 Imaged with the Permission of N.Y.U. Tax Law Review

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