Guess how much time the average American spends filing taxes

According to analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Americans will spend more than 8.9 billion hours complying with IRS paperwork. That comes out to roughly 27.5 hours per American.

"This is equal to nearly 4.3 million full-time workers doing nothing but tax return paperwork," said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. "For decades, the tax code has become more and more detailed, with thousands of additional pages of statutes, regulations, and case law. This added complexity imposes a real cost on the U.S. economy." About $409 billion, according to Hodge's analysis. That's 2 percent of the economy.

The tax code is complicated, with 2.4 million words in the Internal Revenue Code. On top of that, there are 7.7 million words of tax regulations from the IRS and nearly 60,000 pages of tax-related case law.

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According to Hodge's analysis, a majority of the 8.9 billion hours spent on IRS paperwork are spent on business and individual income tax returns. The business income tax costs the economy $147 billion a year, with 2.8 billion hours spent on compliance. The individual income tax costs $99 billion a year, with 2.7 hours spent on compliance.

"The latest official estimates of the eye-popping amount of time and money that Americans lose each year in complying with IRS paperwork ... indicate that the most important benefit of tax simplification may be the gift of time."