Pay me to save money

You know why e-filing and e-billing is so wonderful? It's because it's good for everyone. Easier and faster for me, saves money for merchants and banks. How is this you ask? Simple. Almost any business or entity's biggest cost is personnel and thus, anything which reduces the amount of personnel saves the entity $$$. When you use electronic means, the entity does not need as many folks to open mail, process mail, or do data entry (because a good e-system will take the data supplied and enter it automatically).

According to NPR this morning, the IRS's goal is to have 80% of people e-filing by 2012. The IRS charges you something like $10.00 to e-file mind you. Even assuming that they still had to process every check by hand (and not deal with e-financial transactions) and counting that they need to review the data once it is entered in their system electronically, they will save a lot of money if people e-file. That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have the privilege of paying them $10.00 so they can save money. Your government in action.

It's the equivalent of pulling into a gas station and paying more to use the self-service pump.

Until the IRS gets its head out of the sand, I'm going to keep paying less than a dollar to MAIL in my taxes and the IRS can suck up the cost of opening them, entering the data, and mailing me a check.