The Time Tax

A powerful investigation into how and why the government wastes our time with administrative burdens, how these burdens discriminate and drive inequality, and what we can do to protect our time—and make the government work for us
Everyone knows that dealing with government bureaucracy can be a nightmare. Doing your taxes is bad enough, but for those applying for financial aid, housing assistance, unemployment, disability, or Medicaid, it’s worse—and the stakes are infinitely higher. If time is money, the hoops we must jump through to access government services or comply with the law are just one more bill we as citizens are forced to pay.
Journalist Annie Lowrey has termed this the “time tax”: the paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens to access their rights and benefits. So how did the world’s wealthiest country end up with such a convoluted, punitive, and inept system of public administration? Lowrey traces the pathbreaking history of administrative burdens in the United States from the Civil War to today, revealing how they were historically built as a tool of discrimination. She examines the effect of time taxes on civic life in the US, from how they amplify inequality and entrench poverty to how they reduce trust in the government.
Lowrey not only diagnoses the problem and gives this miserable experience of interacting with our government a name; she also shows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Countries from Estonia to Vietnam have made it a priority to reduce administrative burdens for their citizens, and she argues 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 our precious time. 

Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Give People Money, which was short-listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she was a staff writer for the New York Times and New York magazine, as well as the Moneybox columnist for Slate. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Ezra Klein, and their two children.