Telefile

Categories: Tech

Back in the olden days (i.e. the early 2000s), filing our taxes every year was a whole different ball game. The internet wasn’t really a fully ubiquitous, everybody-has-it-fast, household thing, so we had two options when it came to submitting that federal tax return: we could either send it in via snail mail—gasp—or certain taxpayers could actually phone in their return from the comfort of their own home.

This phone service was called “Telefile,” and for people filing the 1040EZ form—the most standard and simple of all the tax forms—it was a big time-saver. All they’d have to do was call the number and follow the prompts to enter all of the numbers from their 1040EZ into the Telefile service. Once they were done, they’d get a confirmation, and bim bam boom, taxes = filed.

The IRS ditched Telefile in 2005 in favor of E-filing, which is the online tax filing service we’ve all come to know and love. It’s a lot more versatile of a service, since we can use it with tax forms other than the 1040EZ, but ol’ Telefile will always hold a special place in our hearts.

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Finance: What is the IRS?19 Views

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Finance allah shmoop What is the i r s Well

00:07

i rest might be the three most hated letters in

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the alphabet Well after d m v a pms and

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well maybe std The i r s is the internal

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revenue service Their internal i e inside the government they're

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in charge of collecting revenue A k a They take

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money from your pocket in the form of taxes and

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they deliver it to uncle sam and they you know

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service you and it doesn't feel good So yeah these

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are the guys from the us treasury department who checked

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to make sure you filled out your income tax forms

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correctly and submitted the proper amount And if you screwed

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up in any way they will let you know about

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it and a half in the form of angry letters

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Phone calls knocks on your front door rocks through your

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back window Whatever it takes to get you to pay

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your fair share of taxes Like why should you get

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away with not paying when the jones has paid all

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they owed Or the irs can do even worse and

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audit you with an audit he irs will request extensive

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and very specific information and records from you Paycheck deductions

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all kinds of things You claim that you did that

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were deductible that may or may not have been forcing

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you to spend hours upon hours at your public storage

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unit digging through boxes you hoped and prayed you'd never

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see again Well after the third solid week of having

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your financial history poked and prodded like you've had to

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turn your head and cough you uh might actually be

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ready and willing to trade in those three letters of 00:01:35.13 --> [endTime] irs for rough one of those stds instead

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