A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between two men who have spent much of their professional lives studying it and who are able to explain it to people who have not done so. WFB: "It seems to me plain from your philosophy that you more or less start off on the assumption that what you're dealing with is the government's money, whereas I start off on the assumption that what you're dealing with is the individual's money or the corporation's money. So what you insist on calling tax subsidies, tax expenditures, I would simply view as a form of remission...." SS: "I don't agree ... with the way you characterized my general position ... I would put it this way. We have decided to have an income tax in this country.... The base of the tax, the thing we're going to tax, is an individual's income." WFB: "Yes." SS: "Now, having decided that, then any exclusion from our concept of income becomes a particular preference for that individual as compared with other individuals who are differently treated."