In Sweden, the vast majority of taxpayers don’t do battle with tax documents and fine-print questions about itemized deductions. They just get a document from the government with all the relevant information already filled out. Some even get a text message with their prepared tax information, and if they respond “yes,” their taxes are done. Andreas Hatzigeorgiou, a chief economist with the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, told PRI that individuals with more involved filings can always spend more time on their taxes, if they like. “If you don’t have any complicated things that you want to do”—like listing business expenses from a sole proprietorship —“it takes you five seconds,” he said.

In the United States, however, taxes are tortuous—for those who pay them as well as those who collect them. Compliance costs are 10 times higher than in most European countries. Poor Americans in particular suffer for the time and money it takes to fill out what are essentially redundant documents. “These taxpayers are just copying into a tax return information that the IRS already receives independently,” the economist Austan Goolsbee wrote in a Brookings paper.