Editing Form 1040 (section)

===Cost of filing===

{{Main|Tax preparation#Controversy}}
For tax return preparation, Americans spent roughly 20 percent of the amount collected in taxes (estimating the compliance costs and efficiency costs is difficult because neither the government nor taxpayers maintain regular accounts of these costs).<ref name="GAO">[http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-878 Tax Policy: Summary of Estimates of the Costs of the Federal Tax System] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160910192703/http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-878 |date=September 10, 2016 }} by the U.S. Government Accountability Office</ref> As of 2013, there were more tax preparers in the US (1.2 million) than there were [[Law enforcement in the United States|law enforcement officers]] (765 thousand) and [[Firefighting in the United States|firefighters]] (310,400) combined.<ref name="FaceTheFacts"/> The National Taxpayers Union estimated the 2018 compliance cost at 11 hours per form 1040 vs. 12 hours in 2017, with a total of $92.5 billion spent in individual income tax compliance vs. $94.27 billion in 2017.<ref name="ntu.org"/>

In 2008, 57.8 percent of tax returns were filed with assistance from paid tax preparers,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/why-do-low-income-families-use-tax-preparers |title=Why do low-income families use tax preparers? |publisher=[[Tax Policy Center]] |access-date=September 16, 2016}}</ref> compared to about 20 percent of taxpayers employing a paid preparer in the 1950s.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VpVGAd7TknkC&pg=PA11 |title=Learning to Love Form 1040: Two Cheers for the Return-Based Mass Income Tax|author=Lawrence Zelenak |year=2013 |publisher=[[The University of Chicago Press]]|isbn=9780226019086}}</ref>{{rp|11}}