Mind Boggling Facts about the IRS

• The Gettysburg Address is 269 words; the Declaration of Independence is 1,337 words; the Holy Bible is ~773,000 words; the Internal Revenue Code has grown from 11,400 words in 1913 to about 7 million words today
• There are at least 480 different tax forms, each with many pages of instructions
• Even the easiest form, the 1040E, has 33 pages of instructions, and all in fine print.
• The IRS sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions each year. Laid end to end, they would stretch 28 times around the earth;
• Nearly 300,000 tress are cut down yearly to produce the paper for all the IRS forms and instructions.
• American taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with federal taxes each year; more than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the United States.
• The burden of compliance is the equivalent to a staff of 3 million people working full time for a year, just to comply with the taxes on individuals and businesses;
• The IRS employs 114,000 people, 2x as many as the CIA and 5x as many as the FBI.
• 60% of taxpayers must hire a professional to get through their own return.
• Federal income taxes eat up 38.2% of the average family's income; that's more than for food, clothing, and shelter combined.