How many hours are required to complete 1 year of federal paperwork?

The government must improve efficiency and reduce paperwork for businesses. My wife closed her small legal practice, the cost of compliance, keeping an office and then paying a para-legal under the regulations just did not make sense. I understand the desire of the Obama administration to ensure that people have job with benefits but the reality is the cost drives jobs away and forces concentration into larger companies. You end of killing many small businesses because it just plan cost too much to setup shop. She took a part-time job at Ohio State to help the tuition cost.
I hope some level of streamlining occurs but we need a level of trust and integrity in the process, especially the IRS. Let's hope this administration gets it right, because it will make a difference in economic growth.

Most Interesting... I do Hope something gets done to work thru and to Eliminate ot...

I think this administration should look hard at all gov't programs and keep the effective ones and eliminate the ineffective programs and departments in our gov't. One nation one language. English is spoken in the workplace and all gov't forms and documents will be printed in English. When you arrive in country before you are given citizenship you learn to read, speak and write English. The require this of you if you move to Mexico. No one there will care if you don't speak Spanish as you will be returned where you came from.

Update and answer:

9.7 billion hours required to complete 1 year of federal paperwork:
How does one visualize 9.778 billion hours? Few can, but there's this. An 80-year human lifespan is 29,200 days. That's 700,800 hours.

That means the December 2016 OMB report's 9.778 billion hours of paperwork took up the equivalent of 13,953 full human lifetimes.

The government figures the value of an hour of work at $20, and Crews estimated that the new report reveals a cost to the country at $195 billion.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of the paperwork requirement came from Treasury and IRS documents.

SP5 Mark Kuzinski like a GAZILLION. lol

I would expect the cumulative number of hours to be roughly 9.78 billion SP5 Mark Kuzinski to complete 1 year of federal paperwork.
Hopefully in the next year or two the number will be reduced significantly as regulations are streamlined, revoked or declared obsolete.