SEPTEMBER 1, 2026

Journalist argues government red tape functions as a "time tax" that blocks Americans from benefits they are owed

Atlantic journalist Annie Lowrey has published a new book, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time — and How to Fix It, arguing that administrative burdens in government benefit programs act as a barrier preventing eligible Americans from receiving assistance. Lowrey describes the cumulative burden of paperwork, phone holds, and in-person lines as a "time tax" paid most heavily by those who rely on programs such as unemployment insurance, SNAP, SSI, TANF, and WIC. She draws a contrast with Social Security, which she says functions with roughly 1% overhead and a low payment error rate despite managing complex lifetime earnings data.

Annie Lowrey, a journalist with The Atlantic, frames the administrative complexity of U.S. government benefit programs as a de facto "tax" on time — one levied most heavily on people with the fewest resources to spare. Her new book, The Time Tax, presents this not as an abstract policy concern but as a moral one: systems designed to help low-income Americans, she argues, should not be easiest to navigate for those who are also skilled at paperwork.

In an interview with NPR, Lowrey described how programs targeted at the most vulnerable populations — SSI for low-income seniors with disabilities, TANF for low-income mothers, and WIC for low-income parents and young children — tend to carry the most significant administrative burdens. SSI, she noted, requires recipients to comply with asset tests that demand precise accounting of bank account balances and any savings. "Everything that we know about being very sick, very at risk, very poor, homeless, vulnerable in some fashion," she said, suggests "those programs should be easier, not harder."

Lowrey said that new paperwork requirements and work requirements have already removed millions of Americans from food assistance, with the numbers continuing to grow. She described the unemployment insurance system as a parallel case: a contributory benefit that workers pay into throughout employment, yet one that some recipients cannot access because they cannot complete the required paperwork, or because state agencies cannot process the volume they receive.