OMB: Red tape costs Americans 9 billion hours, $189 billion
By Paul Bedard | October 9, 2014 | 11:07 am
Complying with the paperwork requirements of the federal government cost Americans 9.453 billion hours last year alone, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Tax compliance accounted for the bulk of the red tape, according to an analysis of the OMB data by Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
In his review of OMB’s “2014 Information Collection Budget of the U.S. Government,” he found that filing taxes ate up 7 billion hours.
Overall, the massive number of human hours needed to complete paperwork requirements of 22 executive and six independent agencies was far higher than at the start of the Bush administration. In 2000, the paperwork compliance burden was 7.4 billion hours. But the 2013 number was down slightly from 2012’s 9.467 billion hours.
Crews calculated that the human toil on paperwork is equivalent of 13,488 human lifetimes. And at $20 an hour, the cost is nearly $200 billion.
“The OMB doesn’t project dollar cost estimates for all these hours, but did allow back in the 2011 edition of the Information Collection Budget that ‘if each hour [8.783 billion] is valued at $20, the monetary equivalent would be $176 billion.’ A corresponding figure for the newer 2014 report would be $189 billion (9.453 billion hours times $20),” he wrote on CEI’s blog.
Crews also noted that the compliance hours required under the Dodd-Frank law financial reform law are not included.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/omb-red-tape-costs-americans-9-billion-hours-189-billion/article/2554590
