While we're on the subject of taxes...

This particularly obnoxious column from the BBC decries, among other things, tax avoidance -- the practice of exploiting legal loopholes in the tax code.

Again, let's consider this for a minute. "Exploiting legal loopholes." The loopholes are perfectly legal! Why are we lambasting big corporations and rich individuals for plying their lawyers' knowledge of the tax code to reduce the tab on April 15? I'm not angry, I'm jealous!

The tax loophole is a creation of (largely liberal, although sometimes conservative) efforts to manipulate the tax code for social engineering. Not very often are these things explicitly written into the code. They are frequently unintended consequences of other incentives and penalties that are written into the tax code.

So if we're unhappy that folks are using these perfectly legal means to reduce their tax bills, and those perfectly legal means arise from efforts to perfectly fine-tune the tax code, what again makes us think that more "fine tuning" will close the loopholes?