Tax Compliance Both Taxing & Costly

Writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, economist Arthur Laffer makes the case that citizens should be able to comply with the tax code without having to spend absurd amounts of money to do so. He estimates the cost of compliance with the current tax code at $431 billion annually. A markup of 30 cents on the dollar paid in taxes.

David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union claims his research, as of 2009 shows the income-tax industry employed “more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies, more than all the workers at Walmart stores, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, International Business Machines and Citigroup combined.” ◆