The Advantages and Disadvantages of e-Filing

What are the advantages and disadvantages of IRB e-Filing? Should you opt for e-Filing instead of the usual income tax form?

For that purpose, I am going to share the advantages and disadvantages of e-Filing in this post.

5 advantages of e-Filing

Let’s start with the advantages of e-Filing.

Personally, I had been using e-Filing for the past few years. So, I share my personal view on the advantages of e-Filing below:

1. Fast and convenient

Firstly, e-Filing is fast and convenient.

Because there is no need to personally send the income tax form to the IRB or by sending it by post.

So, you will save:

• precious time
• car fuel
• parking fees
• postal fee or courier charges

Also, you don’t have to worry about your income tax submission getting lost in the post and didn’t arrive at the IRB office in time.

2. Environmental friendly

Secondly, anything related to digital or electronic ways will save a lot of paperwork and plain paper as well.

Thus, we are saving the planet Earth by using e-Filing.

Can you imagine how many trees can be saved if all Malaysian choose to use e-Filing instead of submitting the manual form?

Perhaps you don’t see the impact now. But, do it for the future of the next generations.

3. Simpler and easier

Next, it is much easier to use e-filing as you don’t have to refer to the hardcopy explanatory notes.

You just need to select the options from the drop-down menu. And all the additional details are just a click away.

Again, this saves you a lot of time.

4. More efficiency

As for the fourth point, it is more to the benefit of IRB personnel.

It is much more efficient to process the form submitted through e-Filing compared to the traditional hardcopy way.

With this, e-Filing is reducing a lot of headaches for IRB personnel.

In return, IRB personnel has more time to focus on the important thing, which is to process the income tax submission.

5. Faster tax refund

This is related to point number 4 above.

When the IRB personnel managed to process the form faster, you will get your tax refund faster as well.

Of course, this is only applicable to those who have a refund from their income tax.

4 disadvantages of e-Filing

And now, I listed down the disadvantages of e-Filing below:

1. Must be information technology (IT) literate

One must be IT Literate or at least with basic computer skills to file their income tax through e-Filing.

For those with computer phobia, it’s rather hard to file their income tax the digital way.

Or for those senior generations where they really have no idea how to work with a computer, it is hard for them to use e-Filing.

But, there are suggestions as below:

• get a trusted friend or family member to help with the e-Filing
• hire an income tax agent
• do the e-Filing at the IRB office with assistance from the IRB personnel

2. Access to the internet

Yes, you must have Internet access to access the IRB e-Filing website.

If you don’t have Internet access at home, you can use internet access from work. Just make sure you don’t do it during office hours.

Alternatively, taxpayers can also choose to do the e-Filing at the IRB office.

3. System down

You will never have a system down if you’re using hardcopy. As for e-Filing, sometimes, the systems do have problems such as totally inaccessible.

Besides, the system could also be slow as too many people access the system at one time.

So, just make sure you don’t file your e-Filing during the last minutes.

4. Forgot your password

It is easy to forget your password as nowadays there are so many pin numbers and passwords that we need to remember.

If you’ve forgotten your password, just contact the IRB hotline or visit the IRB office for a new password.

Alternatively, the easiest and fastest is to reset the e-Filing password yourself. You’ll get your passwords within minutes. I said this based on my own experience. You may read my sharing on how to reset LHDN e-Filing passwords.

Final thoughts

Overall, I see more advantages compared to disadvantages in e-Filing.

As mentioned above, if you still have problems with e-Filing submission, the last solution is to bring along all your details to the IRB e-Filing centre.

But, make sure you visit the IRB office in advance before the due date (30 April). Preferably a few weeks before the deadline.

Because usually, the IRB office is very packed and busy during the last few days of April.

Hopefully, you will find my sharing of the advantages and disadvantages of e-Filing beneficial to you.

Lastly, any points that I missed out on above? If yes, do share with me.