Bob Kerrey: “Today, it is estimated that taxpayers spend about--somewhere, actually, between $70 billion and $100 billion to comply…”

“Today, it is estimated that taxpayers spend about--somewhere, actually, between $70 billion and $100 billion to comply with the Tax Code, $70 to $100 billion a year to comply with the Tax Code. The IRS budget is about $7 billion, so we spend about $7 billion on the IRS to have them collect our taxes. There is another side to the coin of this complexity. Again, I don't want to revisit this education IRA that just passed on the Senate floor; I don't want to argue that specific objective. But, in order to implement that, the other side of the coin is, the IRS actually becomes more invasive. So a lot of the horror stories that we have heard came as a consequence of the IRS insisting that the taxpayer do X, Y, and Z. They are insisting that they do X, Y, and Z because we passed a law here that will require it, a specific one, which is the 64th change in the tax law since 1986--64 times.”