Planet Money: Pre-filled Income Tax Returns: Tax Hero

Doing your taxes doesn’t have to be a pain. In many countries around the world, filing taxes is so easy and painless, “tax day” isn’t even a thing.

Back in 2005, a little group of California tax experts were talking shop and they figured, we could do that here in the U.S. A lot of people in California get all of their income from their paychecks, and taxes are already withheld from those paychecks. In those cases, California could just fill out the W-2 for the taxpayers, who could check for errors and just send them back in. Easy as 1-2-3. (That was the slogan the state came up with). They named it: ReadyReturn.