So maybe there doesn't need to be a translation of the old system. But rather a totally new one that could be much more easily created from scratch. In public, on GitHub or something. In a modern programming language. Possibly attached to an Ether-based US cryptodollar.
Do Chinese taxes interface at all with their new digital currency?
Unfortunately not the factions with the power to effect change. The tax prep industry loves a complicated tax code, and spends a lot every year lobbying to keep things complicated and keep the government from preparing our taxes for us. The rich prefer a complicated tax code with loopholes that help them legally hide income from taxation. Some of them are Congresspeople, or at the very least are campaign donors.
> So maybe there doesn't need to be a translation of the old system. But rather a totally new one that could be much more easily created from scratch. In public, on GitHub or something. In a modern programming language.
I don't think there'd ever be the political will to start from scratch here, even if that might be the best thing. So we're stuck with what we have, and the legacy system likely has a lot of un- or poorly-documented behavior in it such that it's safer to translate it into a higher-level language where there's more expertise at hand to deal with extending and modernizing it.
Yes, by “some factions”. But even among those factions, there's no consensus on the basic goals such a simplification and rewriting should be guided by, so there's no strong base of support for any particular fundamental change, even among those who would embrace the idea that fundamental change is needed.