What Takes 7.6 Billion Hours to Produce Each Year?

Now, if you think about it, there's only one institution in our nation capable of wasting that many hours of people's time...our good ol' government. For the answer to what takes that long, think April 15. Yup, it takes all of us and our tax preparers and accountants and whoever else is involved 7.6 billion hours each year to comply with our tax filing requirements. To do that much work, it would take 3.8 million full-time employees. And the cost of complying each year comes to $193 billion. I'm not making these figures up. In fact they come from the IRS itself, in the person of Nina Olson, who is the national taxpayer advocate for said IRS. Wanna find a nice loophole? No problem, just be prepared to read 3.7 million words in the tax code! Have a happy April 15, folks.