Sorry doesn't help your case in the least, the cost of compliance addressed in that Brookings release is the lesser paperwork filing costs and does not in anyway address the more comprehensive work of Payne.Joel Slemrod does not work for Brookings. Are you discounting his work because he is in a book edited by William Gale? Is that the best you can do?
Are you discounting his work because he is in a book edited by William Gale? Is that the best you can do?
Brookings Institute source book,
Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform
by Henry J. Aaron and William G. Gale
Nov. 25, 1996
says all that's really necessary as to the agenda behind the papers.
To get to specifics however.
Slemrod in that paper estimates government administrative and direct compliance costs of about $75 billion, or 10 percent of revenue collected (based on 2 billion hrs taxpayor time). By his own admissions, his estimates are fraught with uncertainty rooted in his surveys (late 80's & early 90's) regarding direct costs of reporting and federal IRS administration costs only.
Unlike Payne, Slemrod notably does not account for the disincentive costs on the economy (by far the largest proportion of tax related overhead costs dragging on GDP), nor litigation, tax uncertainty costs, nor many of a multitude of cost factors affecting product pricing arising for the current income/payroll tax.
As I pointed out earlier Slemrod's figures for compliance are based on a very narrow view comprising very limited studies of direct compliance costs and not the broader based studies and effects addressed by the studies Payne covers in his estimates of the larger picture of overhead costs of the tax burden on the economy.
If you read the paper (have you?) you would understand why the data Payne used is in error (besides being out of date - 1983!?!? Come on.) and overstates the cost of compliance estimates.
Slemrod's claim as regards compliance costs cover studies that are no newer than '92 most dating back to the same period as Payne of the mid 80's and cover only direct compliance costs comprising the requirements for filing, not the broader measures of Payne that effect the economy overall.
In fact by 2002, Slemrod indicates his estimates of his direct costs of compliance to be sorely lacking and expanding greatly with the increasing complexity of the tax code in comparison to the 80's and '90s of his '96 contribution to the Brookings compilation
| http://www.nber.org/reporter/summer02/slemrod.html?tools=printit#N_26_ Slemrod 2002, Tax Systems "In a series of studies based on taxpayer surveys, I have tried to obtain reliable quantitative estimates of the size and nature of the compliance costs of the U.S. individual income tax. Overall, they suggest that the compliance costs dwarf the administrative costs, and are the dominant source of the cost of collecting taxes. The first study, done in 1982, suggested that the cost of compliance of the individual income tax system was between 5 and 7 percent of the revenue raised, including two billion hours of taxpayer time. (26) Some was attributable to allowing itemized deductions, the cost of which can be inferred from data reported on tax returns that suggest that many taxpayers would save money by itemizing but choose not to. (27)A follow-up study, done after TRA86 which had simplification as one of its main aims, indicated that tax reform did not reverse the growth in compliance costs in the 1980s. (28) Despite indirect evidence that tax-induced transactional complexity declined after 1986, measures of the overall compliance cost of the individual income tax system showed a significant increase in the cost of all components of compliance. (29)"
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Your inferences that compliance costs are falling not rising since the 80's is simply full of hot air even by the limited measures of your own authors.