“Ignorantia juris non excusat” is a legal maxim dating back centuries, times when there was no such thing as the U.S. tax code.

Considering that the tax code is now 10 times longer than the Bible, perhaps “ignorance of the law is no excuse” should be obsolete when holding citizens responsible for making innocent mistakes on their tax returns.

Heck, when the 4 million word tax code is so thick that complying with it requires more than 3 million workers at a cost of $168 billion a year, that means it is incomprehensible to most Americans and ignorance should not only be a sound legal defense but an accepted fact of life.

The IRS’s national taxpayer advocate recently submitted her annual report, saying that complexity is the most serious problem with the code. And complexity is what allows some with knowledge and resources to exploit the code’s loopholes while punishing others who are not so adept at navigating the nation’s taxation labyrinth.

Unfortunately, the advocate submitted her report to Congress, where there is plenty of talk about “comprehensive tax reform” but also plenty of disagreement on how to accomplish that — particularly when the federal Affordable Care Act is expected to take the complexity to a new level.

For simplicity’s sake, why can’t our lawmakers at least strive to make the tax code smaller than the Bible? Or would that require an outright miracle?

Happy endings for pets

All’s well that ends well for a couple of local lost-dog tales.

Both a Great Falls family and a Kalispell woman happily were reunited with their missing dogs earlier this week.

In one case, the Great Falls family got its dog back Sunday after it had been missing in the Flathead Valley since Oct. 18.

The other incident involved a corgi lost in the woods near Herron Park that was found after two days.

Both missing-dog incidents were resolved by helpful people.

An alert office administrator at the animal shelter connected an Inter Lake article with a stray dog that had been trapped and brought to the shelter, leading to the joyful reunion.

The Herron Park incident was resolved when a fellow corgi owner rescued the separated dog on Monday.

It was heartening for both these dog stories to have happy endings.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.