I'm with you on keeping it simple.  It's one of the most important things you can do for your end users.  Every little extra link or tag that's not immediately understood and useful to your users becomes another mental road block.  Until there's an actual need for a feature it should be removed. 

Having said this, tags can be a powerful way to create buckets for your content.  I'm sure you'll make a great decision based on what you know about your users.

Don