The IRS puts the annual cost of filing business tax returns at $131bn, and the same notice says the figure is not final

$131,017,000,000.

That is what the IRS preliminarily estimates it costs American businesses each year to prepare and file their income tax returns, and it is the headline figure in a notice the agency filed on Friday morning under the Paperwork Reduction Act. The package covers Forms 1065, 1120 and every 1120 variant, together with their schedules and attachments. It counts 13,640,000 respondents and 826,500,000 hours. That works out at 60 hours and 36 minutes each.

Then the notice says the number is not final.

The sentence

Under the heading Current Actions, the notice states that changes to forms and guidance over the past year are expected to affect the estimates, "however these estimates were not finalized at the time of release of this notice." It adds that the figures "are expected to be available by the release of the 30-day comment notice from Treasury."

The same document invites the public to comment on, among other things, "the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the collection of information."

What happened the last time

This is an annual cycle, and last year's ran to completion, which makes it possible to check what a preliminary estimate is worth.

The July 2025 notice for the same approval package put the burden at 945,400,000 hours, 67 hours and 20 minutes per respondent, and $133.510bn in total. The 30-day notice that Treasury published on 15 December 2025 carried the finished figures for the same package: 857,000,000 hours, 61 hours and 13 minutes, and $131.794bn.

Between the two, 88,400,000 hours came out of the estimate. Monetized time fell by $6.303bn. Out-of-pocket costs went the other way and rose by $4.587bn, so the total moved only $1.716bn.

The trust and estate package did the same thing on a smaller scale, going from a preliminary 33,700,000 hours in July to a final 31,796,000 in December.

The two halves are moving in opposite directions

The $131.017bn is built from two lines. Monetized time, meaning the value the agency puts on the hours taxpayers spend, is $52.805bn. Out-of-pocket costs, meaning money actually handed over for software, preparers, printing and postage, is $78.213bn.

Cash is close to sixty percent of the total. It is also the line that has been rising while hours fall. In December's table the year on year movement was split into what the agency labels a technical adjustment and a legislative adjustment, and the technical adjustment alone removed 70,100,000 hours while adding $8.044bn to out-of-pocket costs. The documents apply those labels and explain neither, and no reason for the shift appears anywhere in them.

The other notice

Filed the same minute, OMB 1545-0092 covers Form 1041 and its attachments, the return trusts and estates file. It reports 3,129,000 respondents, 30,704,000 hours, 9 hours and 49 minutes each, and $8.38679bn of total burden, of which $6.053918bn is out-of-pocket.

It carries the identical sentence about the estimates not being finalised.

The document says filed, not published

Both notices were filed at 8.45 a.m. on 7 August and carry a publication date of 10 August. Comments run for sixty days from publication, which by arithmetic on that date is 9 October.