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IRS’ Improved e-File System Is a Total Success Except For Two Jerks Who Foiled It

It's a project ten years in the making and in case you didn't get the memo, the Modernized e-File system officially replaced the Legacy e-File system this filing season. What does this mean? Hell if I know. I do know that every single electronic return went through the MeF this filing season, which means they can retire the old one and everyone will live happily ever after in THE FUTURE.

“The Modernized e-File project has been a labor-intensive effort lasting more than a decade to revolutionize the way taxpayers transact and communicate with the Internal Revenue Service,” said J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. “So the latest fruit of this effort, the successful migration of processing all individual tax returns to this system and retirement of the Legacy e-File system, can certainly be viewed as a significant milestone for the Internal Revenue Service.”

As of May 4, 2013, the IRS received approximately 129 million e-filed Tax Year 2012 Forms 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, TIGTA found. The IRS accepted approximately 114 million (88 percent) of the 129 million tax returns and rejected more than 15 million (12 percent) tax returns.

According to TIGTA, it's mostly working, except for these two clowns from the sample pool who threw off the system:

The MeF system processed most tax returns correctly. TIGTA’s review of a statistical sample of 560 Forms 1040 tax returns received by the IRS from January 30 through May 4, 2013, found that 558 tax returns (99.6 percent) were processed correctly. TIGTA found that the MeF system did not identify the remaining two tax returns for taxpayers who appeared to have a requirement to pay self-employment tax but did not pay it.

Further review of the tax returns with qualifying self-employment income on Schedule C, Profit or Loss From Business, filed from January 27, 2013, through June 29, 2013, for which the taxpayer did not pay self-employment tax, identified additional taxpayers with self-employment income for whom IRS records showed that they were not exempt from paying self-employment tax.

If you have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the week, feel free to check out the 27 page report on MeF from TIGTA here [PDF].

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