Professor Joe Bankman has spent years working to harness technology for taxpayers. In today’s episode, he explains what a prepopulated tax return is and why much of the world uses them but the United States does not. We discuss the disruptive power of digital and how it is remaking the tax landscape in favor big multinationals while making it harder for small taxpayers to hide their income. Bankman also offers his perspective on what we can all learn from California’s budget woes and why its situation is both better and worse than that of the nation as a whole.

The pencil question about the song “I Paid My Income Tax Today” comes from a book by Larry Zelenak.