Regulations in the Federal Registry

"The official compilation of rules issued by the federal government, the Federal Regiter, contained 74,937 pages of regulations in 2006. Tolstoy;'s "War and Peace", only 1400 pages in length, seems as light and airy as a romance novel by comparison. The rules in the Federal Register are written in a dense and confusing style, often confounding the lawyers, accountants, businessmen, and others required to digest them. The estimated cost of simply complying with these regulations was $1.14 trillion. the National Taxpayers Union estimated that in 2006, U.S. businesses and individuals spent 6.65 billion hours struggling to comply with the complexities of the tax code, at a cost of $156.5 billion in lost productivity for businesses alone. (Quoted by Mark Levin in "Liberty and Tyranny - A Conservative Manifesto," p. 55, from Ralph Keyes, "The Quote Veryfier: Who Said What, Where, and When," p. 82)

Source: Magazine Name, January 1, 2006