Kudos to NYS Tax Department

As I posted earlier this month in Ground Hog Day: Time for Another Tax Audit, my husband and I were audited by NYS Tax Department for the second consecutive year on the same issue. (This time it was our 2007 tax return; last year it was our 2006 tax return; even though the state has acknowledged we were correct both years, we expect yet another audit on the same issue on our 2008 tax return!)

However, we got a very pleasant surprise this year.

The folks at the New York State Tax Department have enormously streamlined their audit process by allowing taxpayers to respond electronically to their audit notices.

A lot fewer trees died this year--both on their end and on our end--we had zero postage costs and the tax department's postal costs were also much lower, not only because we used the efile option, but also because they eliminated the redundant notices sent last year (every document they sent us last year arrived in two identical copies in separate envelopes, one to my husband and one to me, even though we have filed joint returns from the same address for decades. This year, they just sent one notice addressed to both of us.)

Elapsed time last year from the day we mailed our response to the day New York State acknowledged we were right: eight weeks.

Elapsed time this year from the day we efiled our response to the day New York State sent a (postal mail) that we were right: three weeks.

Keep up the good work!