TeleFile Telephone Tax Filing Marks Last Year

[jeffrey]

Filing 2004 taxes will be the last year that taxpayers can use their telephone as a paperless filing method. The IRS plans to end the TeleFile program, which it makes available to taxpayers who file simpler Federal tax returns, due to shrinking demand and a tightening budget.

The main reason that it's set to disappear is a continuing decline of the number of users using the TeleFile program to file their taxes. Taxpayers using the system have been declining nearly 10% a year which has made this one of the more expensive tax return process for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the IRS, after the TeleFile program ends this year, it's estimated that slightly more than 60% of taxpayers who currently use the system will file electronically while the remaining taxpayers will complete their IRS forms by hand.




The change will disrupt more than 3 million people who have chosen to file by telephone each year. While the IRS says the number of taxpayers using TeleFile are declining year to year, some 3.7 million people filed by telephone last year. The heavily advertised Free File IRS tax preparation program was only used by 3.5 million taxpayers last year although the IRS expects to see these numbers reverse this year.