New report: Doing taxes takes up 7.6 billion work hours a year
Federal tax-filing requirements have become so complex that they eat up 7.6 billion work hours a year, making the overall compliance effort equivalent to one of the nation’s largest industries, a new federal report found.
Annual preparation of Form 1040, filed by most individual taxpayers, alone consumes 3.6 billion hours, or an average of 26 hours and 40 minutes, Nina Olson, the IRS’ national taxpayer advocate, estimated Wednesday in her annual report to Congress.
Calling for major tax code simplification — and IRS compassion for economic victims of the recession — Olson said tax complexity represents “the most serious problem facing taxpayers.”
“As the new (Obama) administration and Congress work to address the current economic downturn, we are encouraging them to enact tax reform that reduces the tax burden, not just tax amounts,” Olson said.
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USA Today
I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:45 pmVery interesting posts and well written.
I will put your site on my blogroll.