E-filing eases way for tardy taxpayers

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By Lou Bergeron

(IDG) -- Dealing with the Internal Revenue Service may always quicken a taxpayer's pulse, but if you're among the increasing numbers of taxpayers turning to digital returns, you can at least get rid of the stress a bit faster.

Just over half -- 51 percent -- of all Internet users now have some experience with electronic filing of tax returns, according to a recent nationwide survey commissioned by Adobe Systems. What's more, 93 percent of those who have filed electronically are satisfied with the security and accuracy of e-filing, says the survey conducted by SWR Worldwide.

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Not long ago, electronic filing was shunned even by the Web-savvy, because of concerns about security and accuracy. Adobe's survey indicates people are more confident because they believe that new technologies have addressed their once-troubling concerns.

Adobe makes the Acrobat software used to create and view the downloadable forms and instructions, saved in Adobe's Portable Document Format, on the IRS Web site.

Those PDFs are getting a workout. Traffic at the IRS Web site is well ahead of last year, posting 1.16 billion hits as of April 1, says Don Roberts, an IRS spokesperson.

"That's 62 percent higher than the total at the same time last tax season," Roberts says.

Site-Watchers Confirm Success

Keynote, an Internet performance management company, echoes the IRS's claim.

"So far, the sites are really looking pretty good," says Mary Lindsay, a Keynote spokesperson. Although the IRS site has been receiving over 25 million hits a day starting last Monday, it's taking only a little more than 2 seconds for a user to download the home page, she says. Keynote has been conducting a public service study of how the major tax preparation sites, including the IRS site, are performing during their busiest season.

If you had trouble accessing the IRS Web site in February or March, you shouldn't lose heart, Lindsay says. Between one-quarter and one-third of the people who tried to log on to the site during that period had trouble. But in late March the percentage of successful log-ons ramped up to a rate better than 95 percent, she says. The IRS told Lindsay they installed some new servers around that time.

The rate of successful log-ons has stayed high for the IRS, hovering around 97 percent for most of the past week, with the time taken from first click to first page-view hovering at just a little over 2 seconds, according to Lindsay. She says most of the major commercial tax preparation sites are boasting numbers that are comparable or better. "For all tax sites, performance and availability continue to be fine," she says.

E-Filing Urged by Law

Boosting the number of e-filers has been a goal of the IRS since Congress passed the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA 98). That legislation gives the tax collectors until 2007 to get 80 percent of all taxpayers to file electronically. The IRS also has some cost incentives to promote e-filing, as mailing out forms to taxpayers isn't cheap.

"Obviously, it's much less expensive for us to post something on the Web," Roberts says.

For those who tend to file at the last minute, all this high performance on the tax preparation Web sites sounds like good news. The IRS is expecting about 57 million hits on its Web site on Monday, April 16, the last day to file this year, Roberts says.

"We expect to be able to handle that," he says.

Keynote's professional assessment is that "everything could be fine on Monday," according to Lindsay, considering how the site has been performing so far this year and how it did last year. However, she adds, "you just never know."

There's always an element of uncertainty when dealing with a "traffic storm" of hits on a Web site, Lindsay says. "Knowing that, would you want to wait until Monday?" she asks.

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