The IRS estimates individual filers will spend 196 million fewer hours on their returns and $659m more in cash, and out-of-pocket costs are now the larger half of the burden

The time is falling. The bill is not.

The Internal Revenue Service filed its annual paperwork notice for the individual return package on Monday, and set against the same notice a year ago it describes a filing season that takes less time and costs at least as much. Total time drops from 2,146,000,000 hours to 1,950,000,000. That is 196 million hours, a fall of 9.1 percent, across roughly the same number of filers.

Out-of-pocket costs go the other way, from $50,575,000,000 to $51,234,000,000. Up $659m.

The two halves have crossed over

The agency splits the burden into time, which it converts to money, and cash actually spent on software, preparers, printing and postage. Last year the cash half was $50.575bn of a $97.697bn total, or 51.8 percent. This year it is $51.234bn of $95.476bn, or 53.7 percent.

In both notices the money a taxpayer hands to somebody else exceeds the value the government assigns to the taxpayer's own hours, and between the two the gap widens from both directions at once. How far back that pattern runs is not something either document says.

Underneath it sits a second oddity. Hours fell 9.1 percent but the monetised value of those hours fell only 6.1 percent, from $47.122bn to $44.242bn. Divide each figure by its own hour count and the implied rate per hour rises from about $21.96 to about $22.69. The notice does not explain that and is not obliged to.

The per-filer numbers

Respondents: 170,400,000, up from 170,100,000.

Time per respondent: 11 hours 27 minutes, down from 12 hours 37 minutes. An hour and ten minutes each.

Neither notice says why. Neither notice breaks the average down by return type, so the figure covers a wage earner filing a 1040 with a standard deduction and a partner with a Schedule E and foreign accounts in the same number.

The forms are new and the estimate is not final

The appendix to this year's notice carries several forms that were absent from last year's list for the same collection. Schedule 1-A, Additional Deductions. Schedule 3-A, Federal Public Benefit. Form 1062, for deferring gain on the sale of qualified farmland to a qualified farmer, with its own Schedule A. Form 4562-B, Amortization.

Those are the machinery of last year's legislation arriving in the individual package. The IRS says in the same paragraph that additions and removals of forms are expected to affect the burden estimate, that the estimates were not finalised when the notice was released, and that final figures are expected by the time Treasury publishes the 30-day notice.

Both notices say that. Word for word, a year apart, above six figures that differ by billions.

Comments close 60 days after publication. The collection was approved on 21 August and signed by Jon R. Callahan, a senior tax analyst.