As a followup to yesterday’s poll about your preferred method for preparing your taxes, I wanted to point out a cool little app that allows you to quickly complete and file your taxes using your iPhone or Android smartphone…
It’s called SnapTax, and it’s limited to those who file a 1040EZ. You simply shoot a picture of your W-2 and it uses optical character recognition (OCR) to transfer the data to your return. Answer a few additional questions, tap “File Now, ” and you’re done. Pretty cool.
The downside is that it costs $14.95 to file your 1040EZ. In case you weren’t aware, the 1040EZ is a one page form that you should be able to fill out by hand in just a few minutes (see for yourself: link). And if your AGI is below $58k, you can e-file your return for free.
Another potential downside is that it seems like there’s the potential for errors when trying to OCR a bunch of numbers. With words, you could build a smart OCR engine that checks for spelling mistakes, etc. to minimize errors. But with numbers? Not so much. Thus, you should probably double-check the inputs.
If you’re still interested, here are the links for the iPhone and Android versions.
I think the idea of this app is dangerous because if your phone gets hacked-and I have had this experience its not pleasant. So I wouldn’t recommend anyone using this app for that reason, even if it works for you there is the majority it won’t work for.
I saw this the other day and I thought to myself what is possibly more important then getting your taxes done on a computer? Like is it something you really need to be doing on your phone while at the mall lol