Guess it depends on what you mean by significant. Mine is a significant burden, but I'm probably unusual, so I checked the national averages. The IRS says the

Guess it depends on what you mean by significant. Mine is a significant burden, but I'm probably unusual, so I checked the national averages. The IRS says the average time to complete a tax return is 13 hours: - 12% complete 1040EZ at 4 hours each, - 19% complete 1040A at 7 hours each, - 69% complete 1040 at 16 hours each [1]. Since some 150 million returns will be filed this year [2], that's an aggregate of almost 2 billion hours spent. That's just federal, of course. States are probably less time each, since they piggyback on federal, but there's certainly some time spent there. [1] http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040/ar03.html http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040/ar03.html [2] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/P6187.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/P6187.pdf