How much does it cost to collect taxes?
How much does the IRS spend to collect our income tax? Or to ask another way - What percent of the income tax collected is used to collect income tax?
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Answer by Tom Lindholtz
I Googled "IRS Budget" -- $13.3 Billion -- less than 0.003%.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=235959,00.html
Palaeologus: Actually 13.3 billion is .56% of collected revenue.
Or a little over half a point.
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- · February 25, 2012 at 7:07pm
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Tom Lindholtz: I was using budget and budget in order to try to get a feel for the planned level. But you are correct that actual revenue collected may be a better measure if efficiency is to be considered.
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- · February 26, 2012 at 2:13am
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Answer by
Something to consider as well is tax compliance costs-the costs associated with filing returns correctly. I've found estimates upwards of $300 billion but the IRS measures it in terms of hours lost-6.6 billion is their estimate. You can probably say that it's a negative externality with respect to the direct payment of taxes.
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