Costly returns

Costly Returns exposes the myth of IRS efficiency and documents the shocking hidden costs of our tax system. James L. Payne tells the truth about taxes, and it is even worse than you think. Government claims that the cost of collecting federal taxes is less than 1 percent of the revenue collected - the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. But this represents only a tiny fraction of the real cost of running the tax system. Payne shows that over and above the basic cost of taxes, that is, the money raised as revenue, the federal tax system costs us an additional 65 cents for every dollar collected. This cost is real - the product of all the money paid and income forgone as citizens and businesses struggle with tax compliance - but because it is borne by the private sector it is never counted in government calculations of the price of tax collection. No tax bill put before Congress ever shows this extra cost.

Because every nominal dollar of tax revenue really costs taxpayers $1.65, many of us who are supposed beneficiaries of federal programs are unknowingly engaged in what Payne identifies as self-subsidy - we are in fact paying in more than we get back, subsidizing the very help the government "gives" us. Moreover, while it is imposing hidden monetary burdens, the tax system is literally driving people crazy. Costly Returns recounts the sometimes extreme anxiety and stress suffered by citizens forced to endure the arbitrariness, invasion of privacy, denial of civil rights, and other abuses of a coercive tax system. Why has the tax system become so burdensome? The answer lies in the strangely biased policy-making climate in Washington, where tax officials dominate the debates on tax regulations and where the taxpayer point of view is seldom heard. Payne recommends a novel way to correct this imbalance: Require the IRS to compensate taxpayers for the private sector costs it forces on them.

This book, and the author's proposal to begin making taxpayers count, will provoke far-reaching debate on the entire issue of taxation.