Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Once upon a time, 74 years ago to be precise, the instructions accompanying the 1040 tax form were only two pages in length. Today, those same instructions have turned into a book that’s 174 pages long, and counting.
The National Taxpayers Union has pointed out this example of paperwork inflation to demonstrate just how complex, and out of hand, the federal government’s tax system.has become.
Using data from the Office of Management and Budget and RegInfo.gov, the tax reform organization claims the process of understanding, paying and collecting taxes consumes between 7.6 and 7.8 billion hours in the United States.
“That is the equivalent of about 3.7 million employees working 40-hour weeks year-round without any vacation,” writes David Keating at the National Taxpayers Union. “That’s more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies–more than all the workers at Wal-Mart Stores, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, International Business Machines, and Citigroup combined.”
Taxpayers alone will burn up more than two billion hours complying with income tax laws this year.
The tax code as of January 5, 2009, contained 3,784,745 words. More will be added once the code is updated to include changes from 2009 and 2010.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
A Taxing Trend: The Rise in Complexity, Forms, and Paperwork Burdens (by David Keating, National Taxpayers Union)
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