We have this in South Africa. It was always easy to do your taxes before, but since last year they do what they call an "Auto assessment". The South African Revenue Service collects all the documents they need (payslips, medical aid, pension etc.) from the respective organizations, fills out the tax form for you, and lets you know it's ready.
I logged in to check that they did it correctly, which they did, and approved it. Literally took ten minutes. Nine of which were just reviewing all the fields on the form.
Obviously this does not work for people who have very complex/unusual tax situations, but for your average person it's great.
Same here in mexico. Its wonderful to file my taxes because i only login into SAT website, check the prefilled data, click accept and I get my tax refunds due to my mortgage credit.
It blows my mind that The USA doesn't have something like this. It's basically taxes at work
They don't simply collect all "documents" they need. They hoover up the data directly from various institutions. Your employer being one, your bank another, your medical aid, etc. Not only that, but they're getting involved with the IRS now via FATCA. It's actually awesome that they're probably doing a better job than the government itself when it comes to having an all-encompassing view of the tax-cattle that they oversee.
Oh, I am under no illusions that this was not a pursuit of excellence, but rather a way to make sure they get as much tax money as possible. Considering how 90% of all other government services are complete garbage.
But I still believe that paying taxes is the right thing to do (how else do you keep a country running, even a corrupt one?). And as someone who really hates doing any kind of admin, this was a breath of fresh air, and highly appreciated, even if their motives are not perfect.
I logged in to check that they did it correctly, which they did, and approved it. Literally took ten minutes. Nine of which were just reviewing all the fields on the form.
Obviously this does not work for people who have very complex/unusual tax situations, but for your average person it's great.