You realize it's much worse than that right? Because $10 billion is just the direct cost of those firms, not the opportunity cost or the social cost, nor even

You realize it's much worse than that right? Because $10 billion is just the direct cost of those firms, not the opportunity cost or the social cost, nor even the manhours and software cost. The six-billion man-hours alone I'd value at a ballback of $120 billion; though this is hard to truly estimate. Given that many figures simply assigned zero value time not spent working (and that's clearly nonsense), and that somebody earnign $20 is hopefully worth more; that sounds conservative to me. Complex tax systems also encourage simply avoiding engaging in anything that would make tax burdens more difficult to figure; they cause stress (a public health issue that's still consistently ignored); and they encourage cooking the books to make life simpler - which in turn is an enabler for fraud. The real-world cost of US tax complexity is likely at a bare minimum 100 billion dollars; possibly as much as 10 that; and that's excluding factors that are excluded from GDP; i.e. the value of things like lifestyle/stress but also more economic-oriented factors such as reduced economic agility.