As a key House committee kicks off hearings today on reform of the federal tax code, it's a reminder that Congress has not done anything major on tax reform in 25 years.

You have to rewind to 1986, when Ronald Reagan was President, Dan Rostenkowski was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and Bob Dole led the Senate Finance Committee - that was the last time lawmakers tackled the tax code in terms of meaningful reform.

In other words, the tax code just keeps getting more and more complicated each year - and bigger and bigger, all courtesy of the Congress.

"The most serious problem facing taxpayers - and the IRS - is the complexity of the Internal Revenue Code," said IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who repeated her call for action earlier this month in a report to Congress.

"According to a tally compiled by a leading publisher of tax information, there have been approximately 4,428 changes to the tax code over the past 10 years, an average of more than one a day, including an estimated 579 changes in 2010 alone," wrote Olson.

It's been ten years since Olson got the job as Taxpayer Advocate, and I have covered her at hearings numerous times telling lawmakers that too much time is wasted and too much money is spent by Americans - both individuals and businesses - in complying with the federal tax code.

And every year, the Congress makes it more complex.

"Individual taxpayers find return preparation so overwhelming that about 60 percent now pay preparers to do it for them," Olson observed in her latest report.

One of the staples of Republican political argument over the years has been that the federal government burdens business with too many rules and regulations - and yet - the GOP has steadfastly avoided any real drive for tax reform.

But don't worry - Democrats have done the same thing - as both parties have special interests which aren't really interested in major changes to the tax code.

For those of you who are backers of the FairTax, it now has 51 co-sponsors in the House, which is a little more than one-fifth of all Republicans.

But few expect it will become the face of tax reform for the GOP, even if it does do away with the dreaded IRS.

Some wonder if President Obama might say something about tax reform in his State of the Union Address.  

Of course, talking about reform is one thing - doing something about it is something different.