Filing your taxes electronically is the easiest and most accurate way to file your taxes, the IRS says. The agency is well equipped to handle electronic tax files and issue a speedy refund.
For paper forms, the IRS can scan some of them and upload data to its systems. For other hard copies, agency employees must transcribe digits by hand, a process that took 2.4 million hours last tax season, the Taxpayer Advocate Service reported, with a 22 percent error rate.
If you choose to mail paper copies of your taxes, make sure your envelope is postmarked by April 18 to avoid late filing penalties.
Also know when mail is collected every day, so your taxes will be postmarked with the correct date. Your neighborhood mail carrier generally comes to your mailbox at the same time each day. Public collection boxes, the big blue boxes on street corners, have information printed on them for the last collection time of each day.