The complexity of the tax code now costs the economy around $1 trillion per year, according to a report from the Tax Revolution Institute.
Title 26 of the U.S. Code has 74,608 pages and 2.4 million words. The IRS recently added 7.7 million words of tax regulations to help clarify what the code means, as well as 60,000 pages of case law for accounts and tax lawyers.
The report noted that the 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica is 44 million words in length, which means that the tax code is nearly one-fourth of its length.
“The complexity of the tax code and its supplementary regulations is continuing to climb at an alarming rate,” the report said. “This is exacerbated by growing layers of provisional carve-outs, loopholes and special privileges.”
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