Tax returns fill our warehouse and overflow onto the loading dock.
Nothing says more strongly to me that we need to get beyond this labor intensive and paper-driven process and promote electronic commerce. Taxpayers who used one of our electronic filing alternatives on April 15 will have their refunds before we even touch the envelope of neighbors who filed paper returns. We saw significant gains in electronic filing this year. Our direct file program, where taxpayers file through a tax professional, saw a 27 percent increase, to 628,000 returns. TeleFile was down 38 percent, largely because we cut the population to control costs.