Wall Street Journal, ‘Temporary’ Tax Code Puts Nation in a Lasting Bind, by John D. McKinnon, Gary Fields & Laura Saunders:

In the late 1990s, there were typically fewer than a dozen tax provisions that had just a limited lease on life and needed to be renewed every year or so.

Today there are 141.

Now Congress, taking up a deal worked out between the Obama administration and Republican leaders, is poised to turn the whole personal income-tax system into something of a temporary structure. The plan embraces a broad range of provisions—an extension of Bush-era rates, a new estate-tax formula—but for only two years. A payroll-tax cut in the bill is for a single year.

This means that if the compromise passes largely intact, the U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on top of dozens of corporate-tax provisions that already were subject to annual renewal.

The level of uncertainty, unusual for developed nations, complicates planning and discourages hiring and investment, many economists and corporate executives say. …

The reasons the tax code has acquired an increasingly temporary cast have to do with deficits, a divided Congress and even the constitutional system. …

Deficits tempt legislators to give tax provisions a temporary term to disguise their cost. For proponents of a new tax provision, the strategy is to get a foot in the door by passing it for a year or two, at a seemingly affordable cost, intending to renew it regularly.

Political division contributes because of the daunting task of mustering a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. …

[Temporary tax provisions are] less likely in countries with parliamentary systems because these leave the government less subject to having its will thwarted by a large minority. “Very few countries have tax provisions that expire unless legislative action is taken,” says Jeffrey Owens, head of tax at the OECD in Paris.”