Just e-filed my Tax returns. The Federal filing was free but the tax preparation software I used charged me for filing the State Return.
The situation with e-filing tax returns now is much better than five years ago. At least the federal filing is free.
Ideally, the Governments, The Federal or the State should be paying us when we e-file. After all, we do all the work keying in all these numbers and the tax preparation software prepares all the forms perfectly, time after time, and transmits them to their computers.
Think about this! e-filing probably saves the Governments, Federal or State, millions and millions of dollars in processing all our paper returns, opening the envelopes, separating out the forms and attachments we send in, scan the appropriate documents or key in details manually.
E-filing tax returns also saves us and the Governments, lots of rework due to key board entry mistakes.
We could be putting in numbers in the wrong columns in the tax return forms, or making mistakes in writing the numbers down. All of these may result in generating notices and sending them out about these mistakes and their computer systems sending out notices about the mistakes and how they corrected them. If they are not automatically correctable (omitting some numbers that the tax authorities got from your banks or investment houses directly, for example), they need to ask you for clarifications or ask you to file an amended form.
All of the above cause delays all around - for the taxpayer, for the tax authorities. E-filing makes sure that many of these mistakes and rework is avoided.
Computer to computer transmission of numbers always cut down waste in effort, delays and expenditures in wages, etc. E-filing probably saves these Governments, millions of dollars, even after counting the infrastructure and computing needed for these e-fllings.
They should be paying us to e-file. Shouldn't they?
More than anything else, e-filing is a living, breathing example of excellent process improvement, demonstrating all good aspects of how computers can achieve a lot more just talking to each other rather than having human beings in the middle!
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ~Edsger W. Dijkstra
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