For Several Million, Filing Is Just a Phone Call Away
A 15-minute phone call was all it took for 19-year-old Shanell Alexander to file her very first tax return.
“It was easy,” she says. “Everything they tell you in the book is exactly how it works” over the phone.
Alexander, an accounting major at Cal State Northridge, is among the approximately 800,000 taxpayers who have filed their federal tax returns by phone so far this year. Upward of 2 million additional taxpayers are expected to use the newly expanded service in the remaining weeks of the tax-filing season, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
TeleFile, billed as the easiest way ever to file a simple return, is the IRS’ latest effort to move toward paperless filing.
The agency, which says electronically filed returns are 10 times less error-prone than paper returns, has offered TeleFile in limited test programs for the last five years. The program is now national for the 1995 tax year.
It was offered “invitation only” to about 20 million individuals, says Keith Kimball, an IRS spokesman in Los Angeles. However, some of those people will not be able to file over the phone because they have either moved, married, had a child or earned more than $50,000 in wages or $400 in interest and investment income.
Eventually, the IRS may offer TeleFile for more sophisticated returns, but that day is believed to be many years away.
The way TeleFile works is simple. A package arrives in the mail that includes a work sheet, instructions, a personal identification number and a 24-hour, toll-free number.
To file your return, you need to assemble W-2 forms from all jobs you held in 1995. You also need the TeleFile packet you got in the mail. If you lost your packet, you can’t file over the phone, because you don’t have your two-letter code, which is considered the equivalent of your signature on the form. Without that, your return is not legally filed.
Assuming you’ve kept the package and the code, you simply dial the toll-free TeleFile number ([800] 829-5166) and a computerized voice will ask you whether you want instructions in English or Spanish. It will then lead you through the rest of the process, including punching in your Social Security number, employer identification numbers, wages and withholding figures listed on your W-2s.
The system pauses after each step to double-check that the numbers you have entered are correct and to add them up. It then gives you the totals and tells you where to record them on your work sheet.
For example, Alexander, who had several jobs in 1995, was asked to punch in her wages from each W-2. The computer then tabulated the total and told her to record the combined amount--her adjusted gross income--on line D of the work sheet.
The IRS computer will also tabulate your taxable income--the amount after subtracting personal exemption and standard deduction amounts--and your tax obligation. It will then tell you whether you’re getting a refund or need to pay more.
If you’re due a refund, you should expect to get it within two to four weeks, significantly faster than the six-to-eight-week turnaround time taxpayers are told to expect when filing a paper return.
If you owe tax, you simply need to send payment by April 15, the IRS says.
When your return is complete, you’ll be asked to swear under penalty of perjury that you’ve provided accurate information. Finally, the system will give you a confirmation number, indicating your return has been filed and accepted.
Your final step is to record the confirmation number on your work sheet, staple your W-2 forms to the bottom of the page and save it all for four years in the event you’re audited.
From start to finish, the process should take about 10 minutes, tax officials say. However, Alexander says hers took a touch longer--maybe 15 minutes--because she works several jobs.
“I had three or four W-2s, so it took me a little longer to put in all the numbers,” she says. “But it’s real easy. It goes straight down the form.”
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Dial-a-File
Filing tax returns by telephone in not completely new.
The IRS has been experimenting with limited telephone filing programs for the last several years. However, this is the first year telephone filing is available nationwide, and the government is expecting a fourfold increase in the practice.
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Year Returns filed by phone 1992 25,969 1993 148,585 1994 518,826 1995 680,204 1996* 3,000,000*
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* Estimate
Source: Internal Revenue Service
