An article speculates that the income tax Americans pay costs them $500 billion in time and money just to come up with the money.
Put another way in the article, it takes 5.8 billion hours for Americans to figure out how much they owe and ensure it is delivered by April 15th. That time, when looking at the opportunity cost, is worth the equivalent of 2.77 million people quiting the work force. That's right. 2.77 million people working a regular work week with vacations during the year is equal to 5.8 billion hours of wasted time!
Why do we have to shoulder this burden? Businesses (included in the above numbers) have to make decisions, not based on what it good for the business, but also whether there are any tax benefits or penalties to those decisions. Again, if we look at opportunity cost, we can see that this burden is costing the business time and money and potentially higher growth rates because it has to consider tax implications.
Moreover, the article claims, that businesses pass on the burden to the consumer. Of every dollar spent, 22 cents is, on average, used for paying the business' taxes.
John Linder (R - GA), has proposed the Fair Tax (H.R. 25) in order to remedy some of these uneccessary burdens. Read about the Fair Tax here.
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