It goes beyond irony to read reports about Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and his recent tax problems. But first, let’s note that Rangel is a lawyer and a senior member of Congress who has spent 30 years on the Ways and Means Committee, the current Chairman of that committee, which is responsible for the U.S. tax code. Of all people in the known universe, aside from maybe IRS Commissioner Shulman, this is a guy who should have no excuse for evading taxes.

Rangel claims that the he didn’t know he was supposed to report rental income as, you know, income. Furthermore, he wasn’t aware that interest payments on a mortgage were being waived, so in other words, he didn’t know he wasn’t paying any interest on a mortgage (lot of that going around).

Rather than indict Rangel as just another example of “the most ethical Congress in history” I will take this post to call once again for public debate on serious reform of the tax code. When the Chairman of the committee responsible for tax law can’t even figure out what to report and how much taxes he owes (and I am assuming that Rangel didn’t willfully evade taxes) it speaks volumes about the complexity of our system of taxes.