Headliner 189

From TaxAlmanac

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Use EFTPS for Free, Secure Electronic Tax Payments

NOTE: This headliner is current through the publication date. Since changes may have occurred, no guarantees are made concerning the technical accuracy after the publication date.

Headliner Volume 189
January 30, 2007

Tax-filing season is here. EFTPS, a FREE service from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, allows individuals, tax preparers and small businesses to pay federal taxes electronically, including income, employment, estimated and excise taxes.

EFTPS is one of Treasury’s most successful programs. Since its inception in 1996, EFTPS has grown into a payment system whose volume of electronic transactions and dollars defy comprehension. More than 630 million transactions and $15 trillion in payments have now been made via EFTPS.

During calendar year 2006, more than 85 million payments totaling $2 trillion were made, an increase of 6 percent over 2005. In addition, IRS received 73 million electronic returns in Fiscal Year 2006. More returns are now filed electronically than on paper. The continued growth in both electronic filing and payments reflects the continued interest in electronic interaction with the government.

EFTPS offers a variety of payment methods, including the Internet and a telephone voice response system, as well as other electronic solutions for tax preparers. The new enhanced Batch Provider Software allows tax preparers to send tax payments in batches from 1 to 5,000.

EFTPS is accurate, secure and convenient. EFTPS eliminates the paper-based Federal Tax Deposit (FTD) coupons and EFTPS users are 31 times less likely to be assessed a penalty for errors or late payments than are non-EFTPS users.

To order your Tax Professional Toolkit that includes free marketing materials to educate your clients about the benefits of EFTPS, please visit the EFTPS Marketing Materials Order Form for Practitioners page.

For more information on the use of EFTPS and other electronic payment methods such as Electronic Funds Withdrawal (EFW) and Credit Cards (CC) for payment of federal taxes, visit Electronic Payment Options on IRS.gov.

For information on more electronic options visit IRS.gov and click on Electronic IRS, a centralized source for all IRS electronic options. Taxpayers and tax preparers who click on the Electronic IRS logo, located at IRS.gov, will be taken to a page that contains an overview of all the electronic tasks that can be accomplished online.