Saturday, February 28, 2009

Taxes 2008

Katie and I just finished doing our taxes for 2008 and once again, I was quite impressed with Kansas' online FREE electronic filing.  After the muted pain of our Federal returns ("muted" by the use of TurboTax) the Kansas electronic filing was five minutes.  Copy a few values from the federal return, enter bank information for electronic deposit and we were done.  

One of these days very soon the Federal government will have free electronic filing for all simply because it will save a large pile of money/work by not having to deal with enter information on paper returns into a database.  Every year they inch closer and closer to this by allowing more and more "low-income" earners to file for free. (I think if your total income was less than $55,000 this year you could file for free.)  Right now, probably over half of the tax-payers could file for free.  My prediction: in less than 5 years over 90% filings will be electronic.  You heard it hear first.

(Oh, as a bonus side-note, TurboTax thinks the likelihood of an audit is "low" this year.  We haven't been audited yet for our 2007 return so we may have slipped of their radar for now.  I do have a friend, though, who is being audited for his 2007 return and due to my past experiences he has come to me for a bit a preparation guidance.  Once the word gets out that I'm fought the IRS behemoth twice and have been victorious, their going to be beating down my door for help.  I might have to start charging.)

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