Tax Compliance Costs Public $256 Billion, 6 Billion Hours Annually

U.S. taxpayers will spend over 6 billion hours and $256.1 billion dollars in 2005 attempting to comply with the federal income tax code, according to a new study from the independent Tax Foundation.

“That’s about 22 cents in overhead costs for every dollar of income tax collected,” said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation and co-author of the study in a press release.

By comparison, the annual revenue of Wal-Mart is about $259 billion, and 6 billion hours per year represents a work force of over 2,884,000 people.

But wait… it gets worse. Tax Foundation estimates show that the “compliance burden” imposed by the ever more complex tax code will increase to over $482 billion a year by 2015, just 10 years from now.

Just imagine, states the Tax Foundation, “the productive value that people may have added to the economy if they had been working instead of filling out forms.”

Also See:
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