Tax Day is grim enough, but this year’s April 15 is set to be even worse. From the New York Times:
In her legally required annual report to Congress, the national taxpayer advocate, Nina E. Olson, estimated that individuals and businesses spend about 6.1 billion hours a year complying with tax-filing requirements. That adds up to the equivalent of more than three million full-time workers, or more than the number of jobs on the entire federal government’s payroll.
And filing is only becoming more complicated as lawmakers haggle over new tax breaks.
I like Olson’s recommendation that “lawmakers need to overhaul the tax code completely in order to reduce the ‘significant, even unconscionable, burden’ placed on taxpayers just to file a tax return.” Unfortunately, changes to the tax code continue, but in the wrong direction.