I [...] leave with a growing sense that our tax system is in shaky condition and needs a major overhaul. We need a system that is much simpler and less burdensome. That won’t happen with mere tinkering around the edges. Many people who have held top jobs at the IRS and Treasury agree. Our federal tax system is “so shot through with deductions, credits, exclusions, loopholes and outright noncompliance that it fails in its essential job of raising revenues efficiently,” says Charles Rossotti, a former IRS Commissioner. “The complexity and instability of the tax system also leads people to believe that the average person always gets stuck, while the big hitters find ways to avoid paying, regardless of the advertised tax rates.

As Will Rogers once observed about tax forms: “Even when you make one out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

What does Herman see ahead? A crackdown on individuals in the form of audits. Further restrictions on off-shore tax havens. And the revival of the death tax.

The article is well-worth reading not just for Herman’s insights, but also for several anecdotes from his time on the tax beat. Here’s our favorite:

Strangest request: A reader who called himself a “senior, senior citizen” wrote several years ago to say he had amassed $2.1 million of stock-market losses.

“In order to use (and not lose them), I would have to marry a woman with large capital gains,” he wrote. He said his accountant told him “it is not necessary to live together, and a divorce can be had after the tax loss is used up.” If he filed a joint return, “her tax savings would be split between us. Needless to say, she can be properly protected by a prenuptial agreement. Your advice on how I might find such a lady would be greatly appreciated.”

He added: “And should a fee or reward not be paid (and how much) to a person finding her?”

We love to see that entrepreneurial spirit of trying to spin losses into gains!

Yes, it is true that The Mogambo had another heart attack (the third) and is now the proud owner of 5 cardiac stents. What caused this? The health care system did this to me, as I cannot find a physician who has an actual, real license to practice medicine who will prescribe a regimen of smoking cigarettes, drinking too much coffee, eating yummy foods laden with fat and/or sugar, and saving my strength by getting no exercise except for pounding out voluminous, rabid hate mail to the Congress, the Supreme Court, the United Nations and various others, all of whom I absolutely despise for one reason or another.

So, abandoned and cast adrift by an uncaring health care system, I was thus forced to carry on, tragically and heroically, alone. So I intend to sue the medical cartel for malign neglect and make a bundle in some undisclosed settlement.

Anyway that was my original plan, but now I can’t seem to find a lawyer who has an actual, real license to practice law who will even discuss the merits of my case, and usually they laugh in my face and call me bad names whether they have a license or not. No wonder people hate lawyers!

And I hadn’t even gotten to the point in the discussions where I was going to ask them to represent me pro bono, which is where the fireworks usually start!

So I have given up that whole legal strategy since it looks like the lawyers are in league with the doctors and everybody else to make my life miserable, and am now thinking of suing the Internal Revenue Service instead, because about this time, while I was doing my taxes, I noticed that on page 21 of the IRS’s “1040 Forms and Instructions 2007″ booklet labeled “What’s new for 2008″, it clearly says that “The 5% capital gain tax rate is reduced to zero.”

Already beset by demons of my deteriorating mental and cardiac capacity, the idea that the capital gains tax was already 5% and I hadn’t even noticed had me in a panic! What else wasn’t I aware of? I shuddered to think!

So I ran out and accused my wife of every faithlessness and infidelity I could think of, and she denied most of them, and then I grilled the kids for a few hours, but I got nothing out of them either. So at least THAT part of my life is unchanged.

Then, after getting everyone into an uproar by roughly searching their rooms for incriminating evidence of their treason, I decided that I had better re-check my facts, to keep from going off half-cocked and, you know, looking foolish or something.

So I flip to Schedule D of the tax booklet, and of course, referencing all the accompanying tables and worksheets, I am immediately as confused as always, and I suddenly remember precisely why I hate the members of the U.S. Congress who have saddled us with such an embarrassment as the U.S. Tax Code, and how I am waaAAAaaay behind on sending these losers and halfwit scumbags their fair share of vicious hate mail.

But it still looks like the capital gains tax rate is still 15% in 2007, so what in the hell is going on?

And of course, I missed my planned dinner with Chuck Butler of Everbank, which bummed me out, too.

All in all, it was a bad week. But as bad as things are, there is some good news, in that Mr. Butler has never seen my famous, “Look! There’s a UFO in the parking lot!” trick, where he ends up comically getting stuck with the check and the only thing he sees in the parking lot is me, running towards my car and laughing, laughing, laughing.

So, the good news is that I can still pull this little stunt on him in the future and get a free lunch, in case I ever find out he is going to be in town again. And so, as Groundskeeper Carl said in the movie Caddie Shack, I got that going for me!

Like the saying goes; it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some good!

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