Simplifying the Tax Code Has Big Payoffs | Economics21

Simplifying the Tax Code Has Big Payoffs | Economics21:
"With a Senate vote on the tax bill expected soon, a timely new study shows that tax compliance costs are substantial, and a simpler tax code would lower the amount of time and money that people have to spend on their taxes each year.
Americans spent more than 8.9 billion hours dealing with tax filing requirements in 2016, and the Tax Foundation estimates the associated costs are more than $400 billion.
The lesson: Congress should press ahead with simplification as part of reform.
A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper provides some additional insight into the substantial costs of tax complexity.
In the paper Philippe Aghion and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University, Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Chicago, and Matthieu Lequien of the Banque de France estimate that tax simplicity has a value of up to 650 euros per year per person for the group of French filers they examine.
They also find that the costs of tax complexity are regressive, in that the burden is disproportionately borne by those people with less education or lower income.
Their findings shed more light on the reasons why a simpler tax code should continue to be one of the goals of tax reform: simplifying the tax code would reduce these burdens and more resources could be put to productive use..."