Americans spend $146 billion and 11.6 billion hours doing their taxes, and most of it is just filling out paperwork

Tax Day is April 15, three weeks away. If you’ve procrastinated doing your taxes so far, that’s probably for a good reason: After all, the fear of a potential jail sentence for accidentally miscounting something looms over you constantly, turning it into a repetitive, redundant, and reiterative, time-consuming process.

Now, there’s not only a price tag on your returns, but on the effort it takes you to complete them—and it’s costly.

How much does it cost to do your taxes in 2026?

A new analysis from Postal, a virtual mailbox and compliance service, found individual tax returns cost American taxpayers a combined $146 billion in time and out-of-pocket expenses this year—roughly $576 per person in labor hours alone, plus an average of $288 in additional expenses like accountants or software. Reviewing data from the OMB and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the company found Americans will collectively spend 2.1 billion hours on Form 1040 in 2026, or the equivalent of roughly 12 hours per filing—and the IRS expects to receive about 169 million of them.​

Businesses don’t get off any easier. Postal estimates business tax returns cost companies more than $126 billion annually in staffing an...