Personal Finance

How Not to Hate Doing Your Taxes

We asked experts in behavioral science and economics what the agency could do to make tax time less awful.
Illustrator: Paul Paetzel
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Imagine that, every year at the same time, somebody wrote you a check for $3,000. Would that be such a horrible thing? Would you dread the months leading up to that?

Now imagine it's the U.S. government. About 70 percent of Americans get a refund after filing their income taxes; the average is around $3,000.1491242999087 Yet apparently, many of us would rather go to the dentist than do our taxes.