Taxpaying Made Easy

Each year, the Australian taxation system requires two-thirds of the adult population to spend an average of eight hours (Tran-Nam et al, 2000) telling the government basically what it already knows. Much of the information in our tax returns is already held in government databanks � to a large extent, the current process involves us producing figures that are then cross-checked against them. While the administrative burden of small business regulations has been accorded serious attention in policy debates, less notice has been taken of the administrative burden that falls on individual taxpayers. This article argues that by following the example of New Zealand, we could significantly reduce the administrative burden on ordinary taxpayers.