As a RA-ship student in the US, I still had taxed withheld on my meager grad student "salary", and was required to file a 1040NR-EZ. I obviously did not want to spent 50$ at H&R block, to claim like 200$ back. Fortunately the local library had sessions where you could grab a blank form (the library had boxes full of them), and someone walked a bunch of us (i think there were like 40 in the room), to filling it out. The session mailer had already listed the stuff we were supposed to bring with us at the session. Even if someone forgot, they could leave a place holder and take care of it later.
The session was an hour long, and I was done with my return by the end of the hour. I dropped it off in the mail on my way back from the library and that was the end of it. From the subsequent year onwards, a pre-printed form arrived in the mail with like 90% of the stuff prefilled, and it took like 5 minutes to fill out the rest and drop it in the post box.
I honestly didn't think it could have been any easier - of course, not having taxes withheld from a far-below-minimum wage salary would have been nicer.
The session was an hour long, and I was done with my return by the end of the hour. I dropped it off in the mail on my way back from the library and that was the end of it. From the subsequent year onwards, a pre-printed form arrived in the mail with like 90% of the stuff prefilled, and it took like 5 minutes to fill out the rest and drop it in the post box.
I honestly didn't think it could have been any easier - of course, not having taxes withheld from a far-below-minimum wage salary would have been nicer.