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Congratulations. You've survived another battery of holidays. Now for the most challenging season of the year--tax season. It's time for your annual game of Texas Hold 'Em with your Uncle Sam.

Before you sit down at the table this year, there's something you should know about your kind, old uncle--he cheats. Well, not technically. But what would you call it when the guy across the table owns the house, owns the cards, pays the dealer, writes the rules, and then rewrites the rules after just about every hand?

Tax "reform" legislation is intermittent, but the rules of play change every year. Tax increases are permanent, take effect immediately or, as with the 1993 tax act, retroactively, notes Pete Sepp, vice president for communications of the National Taxpayers Union. Highly publicized tax breaks phase in, "sunset" unless they are re-approved, and get offset by obscure "revenue-balancing" provisions. According to tax-consulting firm CCH Inc., the tax code has ballooned from 40,500 pages in 1995 to more than 61,000 today.