The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade. So it makes the job of raising revenue easier. The revenues from the VAT can then be used to lower taxes on income and saving and investment. The Value-Added tax doesn't penalize work or saving; it's a tax on buying stuff.

When it comes to taxation, Americans are still banging out letters on a typewriter and dropping them in the mail box while everybody else has moved on to texting and Instagram.

The U.S. has the most complicated and difficult tax system in the world; we've made it hard to file and pay taxes.

The higher the rate, the more interest there is in avoiding the tax. Either you move or you shift your profits overseas, as American corporations have proven very good at doing.

Starting in the '80s or so, after the United States sharply cut its rates, other countries decided they better do it too, and here's how you do it: you just wipe out the exemptions, the deductions, the credits, the depreciation allowances. And people complain, "Oh my God, it's terrible," but you give them much lower rates and you give them an easier form to file, and people accept that tradeoff.

Relative to the world's other advance democracies, Americans get off easy on tax day. Of the 35 richest countries, the U.S. ranks 32nd in total tax burden.

France, they're the world champion at soaking the rich on taxes. And at one point, they had what they called a hyper tax, 75 percent, and Gérard Depardieu and many others left the country.