Get along, little tax form

Texas today opened its online filing program for sales taxes to businesses statewide. The voluntary Web filing program, launched in 1998, has expanded gradually to include more and more businesses.“If all Texas businesses paid their sales taxes online, the paper alone that we would save would reach seven times the distance from the floor of the Capitol rotunda to the top of the dome,” state comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander said.Texas’ WebFile system checks taxpayers’ entries in an electronic form. The system allows payments via American Express and Discover charge cards or through debits from checking accounts.Each year, the comptroller’s office processes about 2.6 million sales tax returns from more than 615,000 businesses, a representative said. More than 100,000 businesses already use electronic tax filing.