IRS to double-check accuracy and safety of e-filings

[dhilipkumar]

IRS to double-check accuracy and safety of e-filings


Still finishing up your taxes? I feel sorry for you, but now I have more bad news: The Internal Revenue Service says it's getting set to ramp up the oversight of electronic filings of tax returns, particularly those made using software like TurboTax, TaxCut, and TaxAct, to make sure they aren't missing out on money they're owed.

The number of people using software at home to prepare their taxes is huge, according to the Washington Post: 39 million in 2007, 66 percent of which went on to file online. And those numbers are on the rise: Intuit saysTurboTax sales rose 10 percent in 2008.
But the IRS is now starting to wonder if all those electronic tax returns are as accurate as they should be. According to a study by the General Accounting Office, the IRS might be "missing out on revenue" because it doesn't undertake comprehensive oversight of tax software, so it doesn't know if there are any systemic errors in the popular filing programs or pitfalls that users might regularly stumble into. It isn't clear what the IRS will be doing to increase oversight -- whether that's working more closely with developers or auditing more electronically-filed returns -- but the changes are likely to get underway soon.

That said, getting more money isn't the only issue at hand. The other part of the puzzle involves the security and privacy of electronically filed taxes. The IRS says it has standards for securing customers' tax information, but -- in a genius stroke of government bureaucracy -- software providers aren't actually required to meet those standards. How safe is your data during tax preparation and after it's transmitted to the IRS? While there are no reports of serious problems -- yet -- the IRS says it now wants to find out anyway how safe that information really is.

The good news for those pushing to the last hours of the filing deadline: Nothing is going to happen for this tax year, but the IRS says that by the time you're prepping your 1040 in 2010, there should be new rules in place.

tech.yahoo

[aswinnandha]

now most of all tax and bills are payed with electronic bill
but most of while electronic bill with have internet server or error fond
it has take more time but it easy to pay