Checks

My sister posted a Bloomberg article about how the US is quite behind in terms of phasing out checks. In the comments thread, her friends said over and over again that the sticking point for many of them in terms of never writing checks again involved government agencies. I agreed, and then I thought, hmmm. Is it _really_ true that there isn't any kind of direct pay to the IRS? Massachusetts DOR has had a direct pay set up for ages. And I hadn't checked recently at the IRS.

They have a couple features I was not familiar with. One is an / my account with the IRS where I could, in theory, look at payment history and so forth. That would be handy! Another feature is a Direct Pay feature. I haven't really dug into that, but it looks like it is a fee-free transfer from a checking account. And it looks like you can do that as a payment associated with paper filing, and including for estimated taxes. Pretty neat! If I find out more, I may update this.

https://www.irs.gov/payments