These days the best it can do to convince us is to promise fewer errors and a faster refund to electronic filers -- if you're one of the lucky few who is expecting a check. But if you owe money, the only reason to try to squeeze your data down the pipe is that you've been overwhelmed by a benevolent urge to make things easier on the IRS, or you're looking for some kind of nerdy bragging rights.

For a brief moment, while preparing my return with Intuit's TurboTax, I thought I could file and pay my taxes simultaneously with a credit card. So, I decided to file electronically, figuring that the silver lining in my fat tax bill would be the frequent-flier miles I'd earn while placating Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, though, you can't put the taxes you owe on your credit-card tab via Intuit -- the only card-charging associated with my e-filing was a $15 fee to transmit both state and federal returns (a good $10 more than the post office would charge).

I wish I could say the time savings of electronic filing justified the expense. But I started the e-filing process about 36 hours ago, at 8 a.m. on April 13, and at this writing I'm not done yet. I couldn't actually file that morning because Intuit took its system down to perform "maintenance and backup procedures." When I tried again after work, at 8 p.m., I got an error message blaming the system's inability to accept my returns on "unusually heavy demand" and suggesting that I would have better luck between 4 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Within an hour, I transmitted my filings -- but Intuit responded with an error message saying that it couldn't confirm that it had received them, thanks to "Internet transmission problems beyond our control." Eventually, I was able to confirm that Intuit had my documents.

Wednesday morning, though, I was still getting a message that I must wait another 24-48 hours to get confirmation that the IRS has received my filing from Intuit. Only then, on April 15 or maybe even later, will I get to -- wait, is this right? -- mail some special e-filing form to the IRS with my check.
-- Kaitlin Quistgaard

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