Ready to Get Depressed… How Many Different Taxes Do I Pay?

December 16, 2015

The one thing you can’t accuse our tax code of being is simple. In fact, complicated isn’t a word that sufficiently describes the tome that is the US Tax Code. Did you know it’s 3.8 million words long? Did you know that 75 years ago, it was a total of two pages long, but now it’s 189 pages long? No wonder the US tax system is so convoluted and why so many people dread tax season. And why CPAs make so much money.

I Pay How Many Different Taxes?!?!

As you can imagine, in a 189-page tome, there’s bound to be a lot of taxes. But did you know that we have to pay 97 taxes? Yes, you read that right, there are 97 taxes you have to pay. Is it a wonder that the IRS has nearly 2,000 publications, forms and instruction sheets you can download off their website?

But there seems to be some method to the madness. In 1998, when the tax code was slightly shorter, Money Magazine asked 46 different tax professionals to fill out a tax return for a household. It was all hypothetical, of course.

Now, you’d expect these professionals to know their business, which, of course, they did. Another thing you’d expect would be for them to generate consistent results, right? Well, no. They all had different results.

In 2009, PC World tried a similar experiment, except this time it was with five of the top tax preparation software websites. Again, they all had different results.

Apparently, those 97 taxes are too complicated even for the professionals, so it’s no wonder the rest of us regular folk shy away from completing tax returns. Clearly, it’s almost impossible to do it correctly. Even if a professional is doing it.

So, where’s the method? Well, incorrectly filed taxes lead to fines, which means the government makes more money. Of course, that could be construed as a conspiracy theory, but it still makes one wonder. After all, how can one not think conspiracy when you see things like “Flush Taxes” in the list, right? What’s next? A tax on using toilet paper? One thing’s for sure, when they start taxing us to breathe, we might have to consider moving.

Here are the 97 taxes in the US tax code: