The tax code is 5,296 pages long and full of complicated details. We outlined a few of them in our recent column for the New York Times Magazine. So why hasn't Congress done anything to simplify the tax code? We posed the question to Alan D. Viard, a tax expert at the American Enterprise Institute. His response is below.

With tax day deadline here, Congress returned to Washington Monday to vote on the "Buffett Rule," a proposal to impose a minimum 30 percent tax on people earning more than $1 million.

The proposal, which failed in the Senate, resembles the alternative minimum tax (AMT) in one way -- it was...

What's on the horizon for taxes? AEI's Aparna Mathur weighs in with the House Small Business Committee.

States and even local governments routinely seek to attract businesses through tax incentives, credits, or exemptions. In one of many pending legal challenges, a federal appeals court has declared that many such measures constitute an impermissible, discriminatory interference with interstate commerce. This decision in Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler has prompted a...

In a sharp break from that campaign stance and the Administration's first three budgets, President Obama is now calling for an all-in dividend tax rate of almost 45 percent, the highest rate in 27 years. The president's about-face bodes ill for the economy.

Reducing the double tax on corporate income has an ambiguous effect on marginal effective tax rates.

Critics have renewed their calls to tax the carried interest as ordinary income. Unfortunately, the populist rhetoric used by some critics can obscure the facts about how carried interest is actually taxed.

Obamacare may be President Obama proudest legislative achievement, but the fact is it has been a political disaster for Democrats. The unpopular law has galvanized Obama’s conservative opponents, driven away moderates and independents, and hung like an albatross around the neck of the U.S. economy. A decision by the Supreme...