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The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time―and How to Fix It
Author(s): Annie Lowrey (Author)
- Publisher: Ecco
- Publication Date: August 25, 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 352 pages
- ISBN-10: 0063442558
- ISBN-13: 9780063442559
Book Description
A powerful investigation into American bureaucracy, how it wastes our time and drives inequality, and how we can make paperwork work for us
Nobody likes doing paperwork, and Americans do a lot of it. Filing your taxes and getting a driver’s license is bad enough. Negotiating with your doctor and insurer or getting out of a rental contract is worse. And accessing disaster assistance, unemployment, disability, or Medicaid can be a nightmare, the stakes life-or-death. If time is money, the hoops we jump through to comply with the rules are one more bill we as citizens are forced to pay, and an extortionate one.
Journalist Annie Lowrey has termed this the “time tax”: the paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens when they access the rights and benefits that are supposed to be theirs. How did the world’s wealthiest country end up with such a convoluted, punitive, and inept system of public administration and so much fine print larding up everyday life? Lowrey traces a pathbreaking history of administrative burdens in the United States from the colonial era to today, revealing how they were historically a tool of discrimination. And she examines the contemporary effect of time taxes on the public, from how they entrench poverty to how they reduce trust in government.
Lowrey diagnoses the problem and gives this miserable experience a name—and she shows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Other countries have made cutting red tape a priority. There’s no reason we can’t do the same. The Time Tax will enrage you, enlighten you, and, most important, provide a point-by-point guide for reclaiming your precious time.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“In her lucid and important treatise, Lowrey does an admirable job depicting how we got here and how completely fixable the problem is…An unexpectedly inspiring vision from a book about red tape . . . Lowrey’s book joins what is a growing push to tackle the hassles and frictions that make people hate government.” – New York Times
“Excellent.” – New Yorker
“An important new book on the uses and abuses of bureaucracy to control citizens’ access to government services. . . As one of the nation’s foremost journalists covering poverty and inequality, Lowrey masterfully shows how the time tax helps to trap low-income Americans in poverty. . . Lowrey does the nation a great service in identifying a root cause of government dysfunction and public distrust.” – Washington Monthly
“Lowrey chronicles the growing burdens of government paperwork in The Time Tax, bringing verve to a dry topic.” – Wall Street Journal
“A full-bore denunciation of the American way of working for The Man for free. . . Lowrey closes with a reasoned set of proposed reforms. . . all to the end of citizens reclaiming stolen time. . . A persuasive work of advocacy journalism that warrants attention—and phone calls to one’s congresspeople.” – Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Give People Money, which was short-listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she was a staff writer for The New York Times and New York magazine, as well as the Moneybox columnist for Slate. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children.
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