A really messed up tax system

An indication of how screwed up our tax system is was given last night at my church's deacons' meeting. Among our deacons are two accountants (one of them specializing in taxes) and a lawyer specializing in estates. In short, three men who should really know taxes inside and out.

There was a question about how a deacons' fund (emergency assistance) gift to an employee ought to be handled, and none of them were sure.

No, they aren't incompetent, as the tax accountant made clear later on. The accountants were talking to one another, and the tax accountant described this method for determining tax law. First, consult the tax code. (duh?) Since the code is often obtusely worded, his next step would be to look at case law, and then finally a call to the IRS would often be made--where of course, they're wrong about 35% of the time.

In other words, actual tax law is more or less the IRS's judgment call of existing case law based more or less on IRS-written codification of actual law. If you wonder why it's so messed up....