IT’S that time again. Start filing all those W-2s, 1099s and scraps of paper you’ll need for your annual tax return. No doubt, this isn’t your favorite activity. At some point, you may ask yourself whether there’s a better way.

There is. Economists who study public finance have long agreed with William E. Simon, the former Treasury secretary, who said that “the nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.” Here are four principles of tax reform that most of those economists would endorse:

BROADEN THE BASE AND LOWER RATES The United States tax code is filled with deductions and exclusions that shrink the basis of taxation. The smaller base in turn requires higher tax rates to raise the revenue needed to fund government. The starting point of reform is to reverse this process.

This principle was endorsed both by President George W. Bush’s tax reform commission in 2005 and by President Obama’s deficit reduction commission in 2010. Neither report had much impact, because eliminating deductions and exclusions is politically treacherous. Yet each made a good case on the merits.

Consider the deduction for mortgage interest. The policy is politically popular, but economists have long thought it has little justification. Because of this provision, among others, our tax system gives a better treatment to residential capital than it does to corporate capital. As a result, too much of the nation’s saving ends up in the form of housing rather than in business investment, where it could have increased productivity and wages.