tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future." Proponents claim that the FairTax would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the "K Street tax lobbyist's" ability to influence legislators to manipulate the U.S. tax code for the benefit of their clients. The FairTax legislation does not prevent future changes by Congress, however, due to the transparency of the FairTax, the American people would be aware of changes to the tax base from exemptions because a change in tax rate would likely be reflected. Congressman John Linder, the bill sponsor, is considering adding language to H.R. 25 during the 111th Congress that would require a supermajority vote of Congress to exempt any industry from the tax. Effect on tax compliance costs The cost of preparing and filing all business and personal income tax returns is estimated to be $250–$300 billion each year. Approximately the same amount of money was estimated for calculating the tax implications of business decisions. That means approximately $500 to $600 billion was spent in the process of collecting roughly four times as much in taxes. According to a 2005 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the efficiency cost of the current tax system—the output that is lost over and above the tax itself—is between $240 billion and $600 billion every year. Supporters argue that the FairTax system would reduce these compliance and efficiency costs by 90% and return a larger share of that money to the productive economy. With the FairTax system, the cost of compliance would be built into the tax by allowing the business and the State to keep 1/4 of 1% of taxes collected. A 2007 study by the Beacon Hill Institute found that the FairTax would save $346.51 billion in administrative costs and would be a much more efficient taxation system from the point of view of the administration, collection, and filing costs. One additional "cost" more difficult to quantify is the cumulative cost of business decisions made, not in the interest of delivering more/better product and services, but rather in tax avoidance behaviors. An example might be the purchase of a small company with tremendous financial losses just to avoid corporate income tax on the larger, more profitable business. With 60,000+ pages now in the tax code, the impact of these decisions both on individual companies and on the