The United States system for taxing businesses is a mess. If there’s one thing nearly everyone can agree upon, it is that.

The current corporate income tax manages the weird trick of both taxing companies at a higher statutory rate than other advanced countries while collecting less money, as a percentage of the overall economy, than most of them. It is infinitely complicated and it gives companies incentives to borrow too much money and move operations to countries with lower tax rates.

Now, the moment for trying to fix all of that appears to have arrived. With the House, Senate and presidency all soon to be in Republican hands and with all agreeing that a major tax bill is a top priority, some kind of change appears likely to happen. And it may turn out to be a very big deal, particularly if a tax plan that House Republicans proposed last summer becomes the core of new legislation.

Among Washington’s lobbying shops and policy analysis crowd, it’s known as a “destination-based cash flow tax with border adjustment.” It’s easier to think of it as the most substantial reworking of how businesses are taxed since the corporate income tax was introduced a century ago. And it could, if enacted, have big effects not just in the tax departments of major corporations but in global financial markets and the aisles of your local Walmart.