Of Summer Grilling and Tax Compliance

With the onset of summer, I decided (or more accurately, my wife and kids decided) it was time to put our 7-year old grill out to pasture and buy a new one for the 2016 grilling season.

Since the newspapers are filled with flyers from various home improvement chains trumpeting great deals on grills, there was no shortage of models and options to choose. So after a brief discussion and consensus, we chose one that could easily handle a dinner crowd of 20 or so.

Then the fun began.

Turns out, most models were at least $25-$50 more if you opted for the retailer to assemble them.

The missus would not hear of it and strongly suggested (emphasis on strongly) we put it together ourselves.

I’m from the Woody Allen School of mechanical problems and assembly instructions. I try something twice and if it still doesn’t work I begin to hit. The bride is far more patient and after 4 hours or so, our gleaming new Weber four-burner was ready for its maiden voyage.

Now to me four hours is a lot to spend on most things.

But how about something that consumes 8.9 BILLION hours?

I’ll repeat that for emphasis, 8.9 billion hours. To most, that number is beyond comprehension. I imagine you could assemble a lot of grills in that time.

But according to the Tax Foundation, that’s the amount of hours that Americans spent this year trying to comply with the current Tax Code.

That’s nearly 27 hours spent on compliance for every one of the roughly 330 million people who live in the U.S. – if everyone filed taxes, which of course not all of them do.

Or to put it another way, that’s a bit over three average working days spent on tax compliance.

I’m not exactly going out on a limb here with the suggestion that something probably needs to be done to streamline the U.S. tax code.

During the coming months leading up to the November Presidential elections, you may or may not hear the candidates touch on simplifying the IRC or even disbanding the IRS (depending on the issue de jour) but let me just say this.

No matter who wins the right to sit in the Oval Office for the next four years, nothing will be done. Again, I’ll repeat that for emphasis – nothing.  

None have even the slightest clue about how to pare down something that currently runs more than 1 million words. Nor about the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax which has been kicked down the road and patched more than a bicycle tire over a nail bed.

On the bright side, I have the entire week’s grilling menu planned beginning with marinated pork tenderloin.

Conversely, for a weary filing population it appears we’ll have the current IRC to kick around for at least a few more years.