Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040 - Working Paper 30008 - Abstract and Findings Overview

Sep 19, 2026

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Each year Americans spend over 1.7 billion hours and $33 billion preparing individual tax returns, and these filing costs are regressive. The paper evaluates a hypothetical policy in which the IRS would prepopulate individual Form 1040 returns, using a large nationally representative sample of 2019 filed returns. Baseline results suggest 66–75 million returns could be accurately pre-populated using current-year information returns plus the prior-year return. Accuracy declines with income and varies by household characteristics. The paper also examines 2019 non-filers and estimates tentatively that pre-populated returns could indicate $8.2 billion in refunds for about 11 million (20%) non-filers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages39

Reading Time14 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Policy evaluation of pre-populated returns

Methodology and success measures

Accuracy patterns by income and demographics

Analysis of 2019 non-filers and potential refunds

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES AUTOMATIC TAX FILING: SIMULATING A PRE-POPULATED FORM 1040 Lucas Goodman Katherine Lim Bruce Sacerdote Andrew Whitten Working Paper 30008 [http://www.nber.org/papers/w30008](http://www.nber.org/papers/w30008) NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 April 2022, Revised June 2023 We thank participants at the Office of Tax Analysis Annual Research Conference, the Georgetown University Law Center Tax Law and Public Finance workshop, and the IRS-TPC Joint Research Conference on Tax Administration for helpful comments. We thank Maxwell Grozovsky for excellent research assistance. This research was conducted while Goodman and Whitten were employees at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or the official positions of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy, nor do they necessarily represent those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Any taxpayer data used in this research was kept in a secured Treasury or IRS data repository, and all results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. The authors declare that they have no relevant financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2022 by Lucas Goodman, Katherine Lim, Bruce Sacerdote, and Andrew Whitten. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040 Lucas Goodman, Katherine Lim, Bruce Sacerdote, and Andrew Whitten NBER Working Paper No. 30008 April 2022, Revised June 2023 JEL No. H0,H2,H24,I3 ABSTRACT Each year Americans spend over 1.7 billion hours and $33 billion preparing individual tax returns, and these filing costs are regressive. To lower and redistribute the filing burden, researchers and policymakers have proposed having the IRS prepopulate tax returns for individuals. We evaluate this hypothetical policy using a large, nationally representative sample of returns filed for tax year 2019. Our baseline results indicate that between 66 and 75 million returns (42 to 48 percent of all returns) could be accurately pre-populated using only current-year information returns and the prior-year return. Accuracy rates decline with income and are higher for taxpayers who have fewer dependents or are unmarried. We also examine 2019 non-filers, finding that pre-populated returns tentatively indicate $8.2 billion in refunds due to 11 million (20 percent) of them. Lucas Goodman Office of Tax Analysis Department of Treasury 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20220 [Lucas.Goodman@treasury.gov](Lucas.Goodman@treasury.gov) Katherine Lim Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank 90 Hennepin Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55401 [katie.lim@mpls.frb.org](katie.lim@mpls.frb.org) Bruce Sacerdote 6106 Rockefeller Hall Department of Economics Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755-3514 and NBER [Bruce.I.Sacerdote@dartmouth.edu](Bruce.I.Sacerdote@dartmouth.edu) Andrew Whitten Office of Tax Analysis Department of the Treasury Washington, DC 20220 [andrew.whitten@treasury.gov](andrew.whitten@treasury.gov) The direct costs of individual income tax compliance are large and growing. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that the average filer spends $210 and 11 hours to file thei

FAQs

What policy is evaluated in this paper?

The paper evaluates a hypothetical policy where the IRS prepopulates individual tax returns, specifically a pre-populated Form 1040, using available information.

How is the success of pre-population measured?

Success is assessed using two approaches: an item-based approach that checks for failure situations where information would be inaccurate, and a second approach that simulates pre-populated entries line by line using available data.

What do the baseline results suggest about the number of returns that could be pre-populated accurately?

Baseline results indicate that between 66 and 75 million returns (42 to 48 percent of all returns) could be accurately pre-populated using current-year information returns and the prior-year return.

Sep 19, 2026

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