This efiling thing drives me nuts. I've used eztaxreturn.com in the past but spending
24.95 to file my state and fed taxes ( I have to do both at same time ).
Taxact did it for 14 bucks state and fed. They are making their money on the state side obviously. Saving 10 bucks felt good, paying 14 bucks to file what is a generic, nothing special set of tax returns sounds like something PV would rant about.
Maybe the IRS and the State IRS should provide online filing themselves. They have most of the data. It would be easier and cheaper than this crap. Governement, how about working for me?
Absolutely---on top of the injury of paying to pay taxes, they add the insult of having to enter all the subsidiary data (1099s, all the numbers from the W2, etc)---data that THE IRS ALREADY HAS!
I think they already do, it's the software companies that are collecting the bux for e-filing. E-filing both fed and state is "free" this year with Turbo-Tax.
You aren't, but the IRS has been providing third party's with your info since 2003. Any thoughts you have of either security in your papers or privacy exist only in your own mind Leon - not in the law. The current Congress is in the process of reversing this right now. California just did as well. I can only imagine how a law passed today will deal with the "cat" being out of the bag, however. How would someone "un-fart"? LOL
I have no control over what the IRS does with my info, I'm sure of that. But the only way you can even try to keep your info secure is to severely limit who you give it to. Every time you send it off into cyberspace, write it down on some document, give it over the phone... you are creating a potential leak. Maybe not today, but businesses are loath to purge/give up personal info once they have it. A bit of personal info here and there is bad, but the facts and figures on one's tax form has way more info than I care to part with. I can't get out of sending it to the IRS, but I sure can't see any reason to let the tax software companies maybe, possibly have some of it.
Do you know what their software is doing/talking to on your computer?
If you do it online, are you really sure that your web browser hasn't been compromised by another program and isn't it communicating with the software vendors website, not the IRS?
I'm not paranoid, losing sleep over this, but I sure see the potential leakage of personal info here...
One of my old friends use to do his taxes via software like this, but his computer wasn't online and he printed out the forms and mailed them in. I ought to ask him if he has went to e-filing yet, he worried a lot more about this type of stuff than I ever did.
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