Article: The IRS tax code: 7 million words to tell us how much we owe?

The IRS tax code: 7 million words to tell us how much we owe?

Would you believe it if I told you that as a nation, we expend the productive time of three million people working full-time, year around, just to figure out how much we owe in federal income taxes? It's true.

Every year, American business owners and the tax experts they hire spend 3.4 billion hours on tax preparation. And a recent study shows that it costs business $710 in lost time and accounting fees to pay every $100 in taxes!

Individuals and their tax preparers devote an additional 1.7 billion hours.

"How can that be possible?" you ask. The IRS code, that's how. It began 84 years ago as 14 pages of tax law. Today, the code ...

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