What Denmark, Sweden, and Spain could teach America about taxes

Tax day doesn't have to suck — at least not this much.

The IRS knows what you make. It knows if you typically take the standard deduction. For a lot of Americans, the IRS could just fill out their taxes for them. It would save billions of dollars in tax preparation fees and hundreds of millions of hours spent filling out tax forms.

This isn't some wild idea: it was piloted in California, where citizens loved it — 97 percent of those who used it said they would do so...