Electronic Tax Filing = Accuracy

This post is a little too late for this tax season, but I heard this statistic and thought it was too important not to share. If you fill out your taxes long-hand, you have a 20% chance of messing something up and having the IRS send your return back. If you file electronically, you have less than 1% chance of screwing something up. One of the most common mistakes that the Luddites make: including a signature.

The moral of this story is: file your taxes electronically. It saves trees and saves you trouble. Plus, it's easier and it's cheaper. I did both my federal and state taxes for like $17 as opposed to blowing $180 at H&R Block or something.

Doom and Gloom - just in time for Tax Day!

I was spring cleaning my electronic discussion lists today. What a mess. After I made some sense of my filters, digests and random listserv messages, I began enjoying a steady stream of info again.

And I found this Associated Press article about how the Internal Revenue Service had a very insecure stream of information going through its routers and data switches. Give some unauthorized people administrator's rights and then create some unauthorized accounts and you have yourself one compromised tax system.

There's a lot of good (and scary) information in this short article. Well worth the read. Taxes are the reason for the season.

Report Finds IRS Computer Security Flaws