Taxpayers still may opt to file paper shop online 2011returns, of course. But there are early signs the IRS' campaign, which was ordered by Congress, is working. Lawrence Best, a New York CPA who figures he has prepared more than 30,000 returns in his 31 years of practice, says he was an "old dog who didn't want to learn new tricks" until forced to e-file this year. Now, he says, "I recommend it, and clients do it."Yet the "e-filing" push will be the biggest and most jarring change for many. Although e-filing has caught on over the past decade -- nearly 70% of 142 million individual returns were e-filed last year, up from 23% a decade ago -- it has been least popular among wealthier taxpayers. To promote e-filing, the IRS this year stopped mailing forms to people's homes automatically and mandated that preparers of more than 100 returns e-file them. Next year, that figure drops to 11.The IRS' effort includes new rules some see as heavy-handed. This year preparers who are required to e-file are prohibited from taking clients' paper returns to the post office, as many have long done. And power balanceclients have to sign a waiver saying no one dissuaded them from filing electronically. "This is a real pain and nobody likes it," says Janet Hagy, a CPA with her own firm in Austin, Texas, "but I don't want to get fined."The upshot: "This is the first time many higher-income taxpayers with complex returns will have to decide whether to e-file," says Benson Goldstein, an official with the American Institute of Certified Public AccountantsIt isn't a mistake. As part of a push to have more taxpayers file electronically, this year the IRS ended its decades-long practice of mailing paper packages to taxpayers. In 2009 it cost the IRS only 19 cents to process an e-filed return, compared with $3.29 for one on paper.There are other important tax-code changes to be aware of as well, many of them a result of December's sweeping tax power and balance bracelet wholesalelegislation. They affect health insurance for the self-employed, charitable IRA rollovers, sales taxes and other items.
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