More than 90,000 governments are stealing your time with absurd forms and rules even Estonia works better

In 2001, writer Jeff Miller walked into a Massachusetts DMV to transfer his driver’s license and walked out as a convicted felon.At least according to the government.Miller had never been arrested.But as journalist Annie Lowrey explains in her new book, “The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time — and How to Fix It” (Ecco, out Aug.

25), another Jeff Miller had been born on the same day, in the same state, and later committed crimes “in the penumbra of attempted murder.”To prove he was the non-murderous Jeff Miller, he had to gather his original passport and birth certificate, replace a Social Security card he could no longer find, and get New Jersey to issue a letter confirming that, as Lowrey puts it, “Jeff Miller was not Jeff Miller.”The letter worked, until it didn’t.Oregon’s DMV later flagged him.

Border officials detained him after a trip to Canada.Airbnb suspended his account because it doesn’t rent to violent felons.“It would be nice if they would take the effort to figure out that I am not actually Jeff Miller, who is a felon, instead of putting the onus on me,” Miller told Lowrey.That onus is the subject of Lowrey’s book.

She calls it the “time tax” — “a levy of paperwork, effort, delay, and aggravation imposed on Americans in exchange for rights and benefits that are putatively theirs.”Americans pay it when they file taxes, renew a license, appeal an insurance denial, apply for food assistance, or seek a building permit.Federal estimates show Americans spend more than 12 billion hours a year complying with government paperwork requirements, Lowrey writes.

That is nearly six eight-hour workdays for every US adult.The American Action Forum values that labor at roughly $430 billion annually.The problem begins with the sheer sprawl of American government.

Lowrey counts at least 91,476 governments, from the federal government down to school districts, towns, tribal governments and special-purpose entities, each ...