Today's Washington Post:  Victims of the Tax Code? Not So Fast; Nominee Trouble Preventable, Experts Say, by Michael S. Rosenwald:

The tax system is complicated. It is, according to many lawyers and tax preparers, in need of sweeping reform. But the tax code can hardly be blamed for the recent problems of Obama administration appointees who came up short in what they owed the government, several tax experts said yesterday.

"I can't believe they didn't know what was going on," said Deborah Schenk, a New York University law professor and editor of the influential journal Tax Law Review. "The tax code is a mess, but I don't think that's an excuse for what they did." …

"These are not rocket-science kinds of tax issues," said University of Cincinnati law professor Paul Caron, who also writes the popular TaxProf Blog. "I take them at their word, but on the other hand, these were not cases of something really esoteric."