If you’re finishing up your income tax return at the last minute and frustrated by this annual ritual of busywork, you should know about a bill that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced last spring that would make doing taxes vastly easier for Americans — and would strongly push back against the tax prep industry's attempts to keep taxes difficult.

The Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2017 would order the IRS to create a free online tax preparation and filing service comparable to TurboTax or other commercial programs. Moreover, it bans the agency from working with the tax prep companies, as it's been doing for years.

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Warren's bill would kill the corrupt, feckless Free File program for good. But it goes further than that. Best of all, it establishes a new "return-free" filing option that would send millions of Americans with simple tax situations a pre-prepared tax return, which they can submit unchanged if they like. Warren isn't the first person to propose this. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) both have similar bills this Congress.