Overhaul tax for the 21st century

IF YOU are a high earner in a rich country and you lack a good accountant, you probably spend about half the year working for the state. If you are an average earner, not even an accountant can spare you taxes on your payroll and spending.

Most of the fuss about taxation is over how much the government takes and how often it is wasted. Too little is about how taxes are raised. Today’s tax systems are not only marred by the bewildering complexity and loopholes that have always afflicted taxation; they are also outdated. That makes them less efficient, more unfair and more likely to conflict with a government’s priorities. The world needs to remake tax systems so that they are fit for the 21st century.

Let me tell you how it will be

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV of France, famously compared the art of raising tax to “plucking the goose so as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing...