Do other developed countries offer taxpayers return-free filing?
Dozens of countries, including Sweden, Japan and the U.K., use return-free tax filing. According to the Tax Policy Center, authorities in these countries handle most or all of the processes needed to finalize taxes due, calculating withholding and final liability and then providing the information to the taxpayer for review. This frees many employed taxpayers from filing obligations.
In the U.S., employers file compensation data directly to the Internal Revenue Service, which could in theory then do some of the preparation work for at least some taxpayers. That could assist taxpayers, who, the IRS says, made 2.3 million math errors in fiscal year 2019. Even without changing the relatively complex U.S. tax code, the U.S. could “operate a return-free system for at least some taxpayers,” the Tax Policy Center says.
