Tax filing coming kicking and screaming into the 21st century

Interesting developments in filing taxes this year. On the federal level, the IRS’s Free File program now has a basic just-fill-in-the-forms web filing option, without the restrictions that the “regular” Free File program has. It looks like the IRS strong-armed the tax software industry into making it for them.

In past years, I’ve used TaxACT for federal filing because they offer it completely free as long as you keep on clicking “No, I don’t want the useless deluxe version” every other screen. I may still use it, but I’m very happy that there’s an option that just emulates the paper method, but does it electronically.

And on the state level, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue has replaced its awful telephone filing system with a web filing system, which on first glance seems to be very nice.

In the past, I’ve occasionally needed to file a paper return for one organization or the other due to not filling free electronic or telephone filing requirements, and it always infuriated me that I needed to pay the cost of a stamp just to tell the government to return money that it had compulsorily borrowed from me during the year. Hopefully, that era is over.