I do not consider myself wealthy but capital gains relief is available to me. There is also an exclusion for much of the gain on the sale of a personal home. How is one different from the other under the definition of "loophole"? Do you think your charitable contributions are different from someone with more income? Sure it saves them some more tax but it is because of a higher tax bracket. And, if you don't itemize your deductions, some % is built into the standard deduction.

Worked for the IRS for 31 years. In the 70s, I could recomputed a return using a pencil and paper and maybe 15 minutes. No % relationships, fancy combinations, multiple definitions, etc. It is crazy now. Even the definition of child can take pages and "depends".

I truly believe that taxes are messed up due to a lot of the globalization and movement of income as well as manufacturing to different countries to make use of their more liberal laws and lower taxes. Ireland is a master of this.