If you are finalizing your federal tax return today – you had three extra day this year thanks to the 15th falling on a weekend and Patriots Day on Monday – you know how difficult it can be to negotiate a form 1040 and its convoluted instructions. Unfortunately, simplification of the tax code is moribund in Congress leaving you to muddle through for the next several years.

According to a recent survey by the non-partisan Tax Foundation, 80 percent of Americans believe the federal tax system needs an overhaul. More than half of Americans said they were willing to give up some deductions to make the tax system simpler.

Congress had made more than 15,000 changes to the tax code in the last 20 years. As a result, the tax code has more than doubled in the last decade to more than 66,000 pages. The instructions for the form 1040, the basic federal income tax return, now run to 142 pages.

More than 60 percent of American’s pay someone else to do their taxes at a cost of $111 billion, according to the Tax Foundation. Add in business and tax preparation costs $265 billion, money that could be better spent creating jobs and growing the economy.

With this in mind, President Bush created an advisory panel on reforming the tax code. The group came up with some good suggestions such as abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which ensnares more Americans every year, and reducing the number of tax rates. However, it was the suggestion that the mortgage interest deduction be eliminated or capped that sparked vigorous opposition from the real estate lobby. Not much has been heard of revising the tax code since then.

Given the president’s low approval rating and failure to enact other domestic policy reforms, don’t expect much of a push from the White House to revive the debate.

The president, however, continues to push for permanent tax cuts, a misguided policy given the nation’s growing budget deficit and the escalating cost of the war in Iraq.

Last year, a Brookings Institution report found that in the 1990s temporary tax cuts -many of which become permanent – equaled about $22 billion over a typical 10-year budget. As of 2004, the temporary tax cuts over 10 years are worth $431 billion. Congress creates these cuts temporarily because they allow for reductions without the Congressional Budget Office including them in long term budget analyses, which otherwise would show much larger deficits.

Sen. Olympia Snowe called this practice “a constant shell game.” As a Republican moderate on the Senate Finance Committee, she has been pushed to support even more unpaid-for tax cuts, a prospect she finds uncomfortable because she has long championed pay-as-you-go rules requiring that tax cuts be offset by spending reductions.

No matter what the tax cut, once a temporary cut is in place, the failure to make it permanent is called a tax increase, and woe unto any senator who supports a tax increase.

Whether you believe that taxes are cut too often or not enough, having Congress debate the costs with at least an official nod toward the fact that these cuts are likely to become permanent is a basic fiscal responsibility.