GAO Releases “Summary of Costs of the Federal Tax System”
The Government Accountability Office has released its Summary of Estimates of the Costs of the Federal Tax System (GAO-05-878) (32 pages). Here are some findings:
Complying with the federal tax system costs taxpayers time and money. Estimating total compliance costs is difficult because neither the government nor taxpayers maintain regular accounts of these costs and federal tax requirements often overlap with recordkeeping and reporting that taxpayers do for other purposes. Although available estimates are uncertain, taken together, they suggest that total compliance costs are large. For example, combining the lowest available estimates for the personal and corporate income tax yields a total of $107 billion (roughly 1% of GDP) per year. As noted, whether this is a definitive lower bound for compliance costs is uncertain.
The tax system also results in economic efficiency costs because tax rules cause individuals to change their behavior in ways that ultimately leave them with lower-valued combinations of consumption and leisure than they would have obtained if the tax system did not affect their behavior. Estimating efficiency costs is very challenging because the tax system has such extensive and diverse effects on behavior. In fact, we found no comprehensive estimates of the efficiency costs of the current federal tax system. The two most comprehensive studies we found suggest that these costs are large – on the order of magnitude of 2 to 5 percent of GDP each year (as of the mid-1990s). However, the actual efficiency costs of the current tax system may not fall within this range because of uncertainty surrounding taxpayers’ behavioral responses, changes in the tax code and the economy since the mid-1990s, and the fact that the two studies did not cover the full scope of efficiency costs.
