OK, so y’all all know that I’m up to my eyeballs here with tax season. I just have to share one of the many frustrations of my profession: the way Virginia handles electronic filing.
The whole concept behind EF is that it is computer-to-computer with little, if any, human intervention. In the old days, you filed a return on paper and then a human being typed it into a computer. The entry errors were horrendous and guess who took the brunt of that? Why that would be the return preparer. The client had no idea that when they received a letter from the taxing authority that the letter could be wrong because whoever typed it in put the figure in the wrong place or left one out or transposed a number. EF eliminated those kinds of errors.
The big advantage of EF – at least to me – is that the world is a 24/7 one. I can file a return on Sunday evening and get the confirmation back on Monday.
Except in Virginia.
See – I think VA has a person who has to manually approved EF returns. Anything sent Friday, Saturday or Sunday doesn’t get confirmed until Monday. Last week, Friday was Good Friday. And I guess the person who pushes the “approved” button didn’t work. So that meant that returns filed Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday didn’t get confirmed until Monday.
Talk about a workflow backlog!
It’s time for Virginia to move into the 21st century on this stuff. Figure out how to program the computers so that the returns get processed in a timely fashion, especially on the weekends.
Oh, and while you’re at it – can we please have EF of business returns?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 