In my country (Denmark) it has now become much easier to file taxes, and most taxpayers don’t need to do anything at all if the government prepared return does

In my country (Denmark) it has now become much easier to file taxes, and most taxpayers don’t need to do anything at all if the government prepared return does not need changes. Even before it became that easy, it was always possible to get a so-called “R75” statement before filing. R75 contains all the information that the tax authority has on you for a given tax year, including all filings from employers, banks, stock brokers, lenders, etc. That way it was easy to see if you missed anything and to double check the return. (Today R75 is easily available online.) IRS has a lot of information from W-2 and 1099 filings, but it’s not possible to quickly and easily get that. A FOIA or Privacy Act request would probably not be processed in time to be useful for a tax return, and it might raise suspicion. Mailing all the reported information to taxpayers, without pre-filling a tax return, would be a good first step to making tax time easier in the US.