"R.A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> forwarded:
Imagine that filing your tax return was as simple as receiving a completed form from the Internal Revenue Service, signing it, then waiting for a refund or writing a check.
Some countries have been doing it this way for years. For most wage-earners all you get is a year-end statement from the tax department telling you how much you owe or will get back, and that's it. Saves both the tax people and the masses a lot of unnecessary work (and since the US 1040 form is the most horrific tax form of any country I've ever seen, it'd save even more work there). The only people who then still need to manually submit paperwork are ones with irregular incomes, if you've made a tax-free donation, or there's some other irregularity not handled by the automated system. Peter.