Does the US have a employer withholding system (i.e. if you get paid $1000 in a week, your employer withholds and remits whatever the pro rata amount is for $52,000 annual income to the Tax Office)? We have that in Australia, and it definitely simplifies the process for workers at the end of the year.

Personally, I've always liked the idea of a 'standard deduction'. People with a steady paying job for the whole year, and simple tax affairs, don't have much of a reason to fill out a tax return given how much data our Tax Office pulls in from other sources (e.g. your bank interest gets pre-filled). The longest part of the whole exercise is claiming all those little work-related deductions here and there. For most people I don't think this ever exceeds $1000 total.

So if the government just gave everyone a default $1000 deduction, combined with pre-filling, filing a tax return for most people would be a simple matter of looking at the summary and hitting 'agree'. You could even take it one step further: if you don't fill out a tax return the government assumes you agree that your default return is correct.

We almost had this in Australia [0]. It was a measure in our 2010-11 Federal Budget [1], but we didn't go through with it for.... reasons...

[0] And there's good reason to believe it would have radically simplified things. I recall 'tax agents' really hating the idea for some strange reason.

[1] http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenu...