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To be fair, paying taxes if all you're doing is receiving income from an employer isn't that bad. There's a simple form for it. Where it gets bad is the stuff your employer doesn't know about:

* Investment income

* House or other capital sales or purchases

* Stock option purchases or sales

* Child custody, dependents

etc. I don't see how any country's tax code would capture these income or loss streams without some manual filing process.

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Most of what you mention is filed automatically for me, here in Denmark. I think the only thing normal employees regularly file manually here is kms driven to and from work, which gives a tax deduction (kørselsgodtgørelse).

Perhaps these don’t need to be lumped into a single tax return and can instead be handled independently by the appropriate institutions — brokerages deducting tax on investments, closing agents deducting tax on house sales, IRS mailing a check each year for dependents, and so on.

Sibling comments suggest that other countries successfully automate much of their taxes.

Just to add, regarding the "single tax return": In Finland many of the remaining have-to-input-manually things (e.g. kotitalousvähennys, tax credit for household expenses) can be reported on the tax web portal at any time.

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