Not so much the security as that I want to have a physical record on paper of my return so I can refer to it quickly and easily when needed.
Not that I want to be here defending banks and insurance companies but - if your auto insurer is issuing checks to you and your wife , there’s a reason. Either you jointly own the cars and/or you are both policyholders. Since you are talking about payment refunds, I assume it’s because you are both policy holders. Unlike my insurance, where I am the policy holder and my husband is a driver. Once the policy is joint, they almost have to make the check payable to both of you because 1) they don’t want to choose which of you to make the check out to and 2) they don’t want to get involved with one of you claiming the car they own was damaged but the company issued the check in such a way that the other (soon to be ex ) spouse was able to cash it. Similar issue with the bank requiring both to sign if the check is made out to John and Jane Doe. Might a teller accept a check made out to both for deposit into a joint account with one signature ? Sure , but that doesn’t mean they will accept a check made out to me and my husband for deposit into my account without his signature, just like my bank is not going to allow me to deposit a check made out to me and American Honda Finance into my account without something from the finance company.
Every type of e-filing software I’ve used allows me to print a paper copy of my return in exactly the same format as if I had printed and mailed it. BTW for the IRS at least, even if you file on paper you can pay online or get your refund through direct deposit.
You don’t have to e-file taxes to make tax payments online for the IRS and I expect almost all states (it does for mine). For the IRS (as I already posted) see:
With all respect, this seems extremely silly to me. Right at this very moment I’m e-filing my taxes and some adjustments to prior taxes, and the convenience is wonderful. The tax software auto-populates basic information from prior returns, validates that everything is consistent and ready for e-filing, and the transmission is seamless and practically instantaneous.
As for referring back to prior returns, having stuff online for a scatterbrain like me is very much preferable to paper records. It hardly seems to matter how careful I am with them; they wait until I am asleep, and then apparently the pages quietly sneak out of the house as a group and into the dark of night, and are never seen again. The more important they are, the more anxious they are to escape! Whereas stuff on the computer is always right there on the glowing screen, and the data is backed up, and the backups are backed up. This is why the government revenue people haven’t gone fussing through file cabinets shuffling around reams of paper since around the 1940s, and if they don’t, why should I? 
Of course as @doreen says, you can always e-file and still print the return for a paper copy, but to me this is utterly redundant and I never do it. But the certified tax and e-filing software returns look exactly like the printed returns that you’d have to fill out by hand and mail, which I haven’t done in at least a quarter-century.
I e-file my taxes every year using Turbotax and generate a PDF copy of the as-filed return as well as one that contains every single form. I can’t remember needing to have a printed copy. (I’m trying to minimize the number of paper documents I keep around.)
This is how I do almost all my bills. I opted out of getting paper statements years ago. I manually pay my bills online on my desktop; credit cards get processed the first few days of the month, because they’re all due between the 7th and 12th. Utilities are processed and the 20th, because they’re all due near the end of the month. That’s also so when I write the check and mail it to the HOA, which is due by the first.
The only bill I have set up for auto-pay s the AT&T cable/phone/internet bill. Everything else I do myself, because I don’t like the possibility that a bill will be more than I want to pay and will get processed before I can stop it.
Regarding e-filing my taxes: I did it one year and it was a major hassle, so I went back to doing it myself. I was able to get paper copies of the returns for that year, though.
I do my taxes by downloading the fillable pdf forms from the IRS site, filling them out, and printing two copies, one to mail and one for my file. I also save the pdf copy, of course. In recent years I’ve been getting a small refund from the IRS, which I get direct deposited. I also get a refund from the state, but they send me a check because they’ll only do direct deposit if I e-file.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever filed American taxes or not.
The IRS and the CRA have similar functions, but vastly different… everything.
The IRS has such a long a storied track record of losing documents, requiring the taxpayer to produce records for a span of years that is well beyond reasonable (i.e. forever), and arcane rules that create catch-22s (if you have the majority of your income outside of the US but also have US income, there’s no way to report it in one go that satisfies them, because the mixture triggers two opposing rules that their machines can’t process).
When I’ve had issues with CRA, you call them, send them what they need, they get you a decision in a reasonable amount of time, money changes hands electronically, and a neat and clear record is created which is available to both parties online. I don’t think I can explain how unpossible this would be for the IRS.
I e-file with the IRS, but that’s a matter of my convenience. I keep the paper copies, and (since I’m outside of the US), I can’t simply log in and see stuff.
I ordered a couple of books of checks when I last moved in 2018 and have used them very sparingly since. Less than five a year certainly covers it and zero most years.
Most recently was last year when my mother died and two separate independent doctors working at a hospital insisted on payment by paper check. Which I found completely bizarre, but apparently it is a real thing with doctors trying to dodge electronic fees.
No, I’ve never had the need to file US taxes, and I’m thankful for it. The only problem I have with the CRA is that the tax forms themselves often seem hopelessly complex, and that’s why I love tax software which guides you through it, autopopulates many arcane fields that I don’t even understand, checks everything for consistency, and then just submits it to the CRA online.
And I give the CRA major kudos for the one time I had a complicated problem. It was a long and unusual unholy mess, which I ultimately resolved by writing a letter – not a form, but a straightforward English letter to the CRA detailing the facts. A month or two later I got a revised Notice of Assessment setting everything right.
I’ve never had to use a cheque to pay my doctor.
Every once in a while there’s some situation where you have to give money to a doctor; the only one I can recall in recent memory was when my scatterbrained self forgot an appointment, for which my PCP charges you $40. On my next appointment I asked the receptionist what form of payment they accept, and she looked perplexed, like “what’s a ‘payment’?”. I gave her two 20s and she looked at them like they were artifacts from Neptune, and shoved them in a drawer.
Thanks to those who replied and I’m sure you can print/store copies of efile forms, but I’m an old dog and this is one trick I’m going to pass on learning. Doing it myself on paper means I go through all the worksheets myself and I fully understand and have physical documentation for every single line of the form.
It sometimes takes a while to reach CRA, but they are usually:
- Nice
- Competent
- Inclined to keep good records
- Interested in sorting out the issue.
In my experience, the IRS is
- None of those things.
A lot of that has to do with the size of the two countries and the integration or lack thereof with state / provincial taxing systems, plus 10 provinces vs 50 states; also the gap in funding between what the CRA has to do what they need to do is less than the IRS’s gap there.
Anyway, that’s all to say that given the reality, it’s reasonable for Americans to not have and not be as trustful of electronic systems in regard to federal taxation.
Americans seem unwilling, in general, to pay for an efficient, properly staffed IRS with up-to-date technology.
P.J. O’Rourke:
“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer and remove the crab grass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”
He’s not wrong.
Almost 30 years ago i lived in Rotterdam. In Holland (and I think about everywhere else in Europe) anyone could send anyone money quickly and easily by simply making a deposit directly into anyone’s bank account. There was no fee.
I gather from reading this thread that that’s still the case there, also in Canada and other places, too. I was so pissed when i got back to the States and would have to send a slow, old fashioned check or a really expensive wire transfer (still slow) to send money.
Its only now with Zelle that we finally have something almost (but not quite) as easy and effective as that old European method. I asked everyone back then and still want to know now… why was the US decades behind everywhere else when it came to banking? What the hell was the problem?
We love nothing more than money in the U$A, you’d think we’d be the world leaders in moving money. But no.
Was there some financial advantage for banks not to offer good money movement options to their clients? And how could that be with our uber-capitalist utopia where any business that offers a new and better product or service leaps ahead of its competitors and brings in beacoup bucks?
What kept happy shiny money transfer out of the States for 30 or 50 years? How and why were we so late to sensible banking?
If you want to start this as a new FQ, I would be happy to add my own experience as an American transplant, because I’m very interested as well.