Modern government surveillance only became necessary when personal income tax was made permanent in 1913. Before that, there was no reason for the government to know where you lived, who you worked for, who you hired, what you kept in your bank account, what your legal name was, who you were married to, where you sent your kids to school, or even whether you were dead or alive. The greatest quantum jump in personal liberty easily attainable would come from the entire abolishment of personal income tax. The government still has to run on money, so it would have to come from somewhere else, perhaps a whopping sales tax, or increased excise taxes on certain goods (as we have now, but most of them are hidden and you don't know about them). "Tax reform" just fiddles with the details of an inherently despotic system, without any possibility of actually fixing it.
Trying to improve the tax structure by eliminating "loopholes" increases government revenue short-term, for sure, but also cripples business. And since most government revenue from taxes (income, sales, employment/FICA, inventory, estate, excise, windfall, etc) and duties (licenses, imports, exports, etc) depends on business activity (except maybe estate tax, which mainly depends on someone dying), anything which cripples business also cripples revenue. Contrariwise, nearly anything which enhances business activity increases tax revenue - the entire rationale for occasional lowering of tax rates. So are business investments "loopholes"? Without those, there's no new business and not a lot of expansion of old business. Is a Christmas bonus to the employees a "loophole"? How about tax breaks for hiring the handicapped (so long as they fall in special approved classes of government-recognized handicap - a lousy system, but probably better than nothing). "Loopholes"?