Feature Tax
Every feature costs attention. Most agencies are overpaying.
The question
What is complexity costing us?
What is the Feature Tax?
Every feature in a digital service demands three things from citizens: attention to discover it, cognitive load to understand it, and effort to maintain it across updates. Every feature also demands maintenance from your team, code, documentation, training, support.
When features accumulate faster than usage grows, citizens pay a tax they never agreed to. The service gets harder to use, not easier.
Calculating the tax
For each feature, ask:
- What percentage of citizens use it monthly?
- How many support calls does it generate?
- How much engineering time does it consume?
- Does it increase or decrease completion rates for core tasks?
Features with low usage and high cost are tax liabilities. Remove or merge them.
Feature reduction as strategy
Removing features is not failure. It is respect for citizens' time. Simplicity increases adoption. Every feature must earn its place, or it should go.