Tax Foundation: ‘It Takes America 8.9 Billion Hours to Comply with IRS Paperwork’

By Emily Blatter

According to the Tax Foundation, it will take Americans 8.9 billion hours to comply with IRS tax-filing rules in 2016, which equals a compliance cost of about $409 billion.  In addition, the Tax Foundation reported that the U.S. tax code has grown from 409,000 words in 1955 to 2.4 million in 2015 – an increase of 486%.  The 8.9 billion hours of tax-filing, added the Tax Foundation, “is equal to nearly 4.3 million full-time workers doing nothing but tax return paperwork.”  Also, the $409 billion loss to the U.S. economy in IRS compliance is greater than the gross product of 36 states.  The Tax Foundation further reported that estate and gift taxes generate $20 billion annually for the U.S. government, but the opportunity cost of compliance is $19.6 billion, which reduces the net value of those taxes to only $4 million......To Read More....