The Time Tax

A powerful investigation into American bureaucracy, how it wastes our time and drives inequality, and how we can make paperwork work for us

Nobody likes doing paperwork, and Americans do a lot of it. Filing your taxes and getting a driver’s license is bad enough. Negotiating with your doctor and insurer or getting out of a rental contract is worse. And accessing disaster assistance, unemployment, disability, or Medicaid can be a nightmare, the stakes life-or-death. If time is money, the hoops we jump through to comply with the rules are one more bill we as citizens are forced to pay, and an extortionate one.

Journalist Annie Lowrey has termed this the “time tax”: the paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens when they access the rights and benefits that are supposed to be theirs. How did the world’s wealthiest country end up with such a convoluted, punitive, and inept system of public administration and so much fine print larding up everyday life? Lowrey traces a pathbreaking history of administrative burdens in the United States from the colonial era to today, revealing how they were historically a tool of discrimination. And she examines the contemporary effect of time taxes on the public, from how they entrench poverty to how they reduce trust in government.

Lowrey diagnoses the problem and gives this miserable experience a name—and she shows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Other countries have made cutting red tape a priority. There’s no reason we can’t do the same. The Time Tax will enrage you, enlighten you, and, most important, provide a point-by-point guide for reclaiming your precious time.