I decided to see how often the Internal Revenue Code and Immigration and Nationality Act have been amended of late. And, as you probably expected, nothing beats the IRC for congressional tinkering. Here's the number of sections of the code amended since 2001:
| 2007 | 141 |
| 2006 | 229 |
| 2005 | 259 |
| 2004 | 370 |
| 2003 | 67 |
| 2002 | 125 |
| 2001 | 140 |
For a little comparison, here's the number of sections of the INA over the past few years:
| 2007 | 6 |
| 2006 | 32 |
| 2005 | 14 |
| 2004 | 26 |
| 2003 | 18 |
| 2002 | 62 |
| 2001 | 13 |
Both huge statutes, both big issues - but man, Ways and Means stays involved in our tax affairs. The DHS oversight people and Tom Tancredo have nothing on those guys.
Of course, the methodology employed here might be suspect. Here's what I did, and I'd welcome your comments about what I did wrong. I downloaded the credits for each section of each act from Westlaw. That gave me a massive text file. Then I used Concordance to give me a frequency count for each time a year was cited in the credit sections. And voila, a hit for each year that the GPO recorded an amendment for each section. Of course, I'm sorta depending on the GPO or whoever to accurately record amendments, but I'm not really sure how else I could do it. Thoughts?
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1. Posted by Anon on July 8, 2008 @ 10:03 | Permalink
One of the reasons the IRC is amended so frequently is that many of the provisions enacted have expiration dates to comply with budgeting rules. As a result, amendments are required almost annually to extend the provisions (e.g., the AMT fix, R&D credits etc). This overstates the degree of a change in any one year. Perhaps as evidence of this, some of the most significant recent changes may have occurred in 2003, when Congress lowered the capital gains and dividend tax rate, but that is also the year of the fewest changes. This shouldn't be construed to understate the degree of Congressional tinkering in the Tax Code though. Tax law professors clearly have the most changes to deal with, on average, of any subject in the academy.
2. Posted by David Zaring on July 8, 2008 @ 13:08 | Permalink
It's a nice point, and it explains a great deal. Plus there's the size of the IRC. But still, it's plenty of changes, and budgeting mandated changing must impel some of the rest.
3. Posted by Jake on July 8, 2008 @ 20:41 | Permalink
The chief explanation is that larding up the Internal Revenue Code with targeted "tax incentives" carries much less political freight than would be the case if members of Congress simply sponsored legislation appropriating funds for the benefit of the interest groups involved.
Social engineering through the Code is tawdry.
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