The government already knows almost everything it asks us to put on a tax return. Our employer tells it the salary we are paid, our bank tells it the interest we are paid, and so on. In an important pilot program, the State of California gave low-income taxpayers the option of receiving a “ReadyReturn”—a tax return completed with information already known to the state. Taxpayers could examine the return and if they found it correct, sign it (on paper or online). They could make any changes they wanted to it, give it to their preparer to look at, or simply throw it away.

Taxpayers loved the program. They sent in thousands of positive comments (such as “Finally government is doing something to make my life easier!”); 98-99 percent of taxpayers who used it wanted to use it again the next year. The program was made permanent in a modified form on the California CalFile site.

I’ve recommended we adopt a variant of “ReadyReturn” at the federal level. The IRS would allow taxpayers, or their preparers, to download salary, interest, and other information the government has collected onto the correct lines of an e-filing program selected by the taxpayer. I call this a data-retrieval system.

Taxpayers would still have to verify their marital status and taxpayers who itemize would have to add their charitable contributions. But this would remove much of the stress of filing taxes. Data retrieval is also consistent with taxpayer rights. The government is going to use the salary and other data it has in its computer system. Data retrieval would allow the taxpayer to see what information the government has, and correct it if it is wrong.