I can understand why someone on your side would say just as I surely do understand that the government, and the IRS in particular, did not take kindly to the publication of a work which points out very large problems with the it's tax system and thus did whatever they could to discredit the man but no matter, facts remain facts.That's funny. His whole book is based on a study, the Arthur D. Little study, commissioned by the government. It's this ADL study that is laughably simplistic and grossly overstates the compliance time of taxes. Then Payne applies a ridiculously high hourly rate to these inflated hours. On top of that, he adds in an arbitrary dead-weight loss as a compliance cost when economist usually don't consider dead-weight loss a compliance cost.
So YOU say but I STILL have seen no scholorly refutation of it!