The U.S. tax code is a total write-off. Crammed with loopholes and special interest provisions, it works for no one except tax lawyers, accountants, and huge corporations. Not for the first time, we have reached a breaking point -- in fact, we reach one every thirty-two years. T.R. Reid crisscrosses the globe in search of exact solutions to the urgent tax problems of the United States. With an uncanny knack for making a complex subject not just accessible but gripping, he investigates what makes good taxation (no, that's not an oxymoron) and brings that knowledge home where it is needed most. Reid presses the case for sensible root-and-branch reforms that will affect everyone. Doing our taxes will never be America's favorite pastime, but it can and should be so much easier and fairer.

Prologue : Every thirty-two years -- Policy laboratories -- "Low effort, low collection" -- Taxes : what are they good for? -- BBLR -- Scooping water with a sieve -- Flat broke -- The defining problem; the taxing solution -- Convoluted and pernicious strategies -- The single tax, the fat tax, the tiny tax, the carbon tax--and no tax at all -- The Panama papers : sunny places for shady money -- Simplify, simplify -- The money machine -- Epilogue : The Internal Revenue Code of 2018.