There’s a strangely fascinating video on YouTube of an unseen man in Estonia walking the viewer through his personal income tax filing. What’s incredible about it is the length: two minutes and 50 seconds.

…

He logs into his bank account and verifies the income data his employer sent to the government in advance. He reviews his contact information, clicks a box to have his €158 refund paid directly to his bank account, and voilà. Taxes done, in less time than it takes the average US taxpayer to set up a TurboTax account.

…

ReadyReturn eventually morphed into CalFile, a program that pre-fills some taxpayer data on the return. It doesn’t include a bottom line—taxpayers still have to review the information and calculate their final tax burden—but it simplifies the process, and could be used to streamline more complicated tax returns as well, said Joseph Bankman, a Stanford Law School professor and an advisor on the ReadyReturn program.