Tax reform is the favorite idea on the campaign trail and think tank circuit these days. It’s the glorious inevitability that will end the nation’s fiscal crisis.

Everyone is for it, and everybody agrees on what it involves. President Obama’s Simpson-Bowles deficit commission said, “The tax code is rife with inefficiencies, loopholes, incentives, tax earmarks and baffling complexity. We need to lower tax rates, broaden the base, simplify the tax code and bring down the deficit.”