Paying federal taxes online seems like a good idea, but why must everything that’s associated with the process be so stupid? The name — Electronic Federal Tax Payment System — is descriptive, but way too long. The (trademarked!) acronym is dumb and it makes an even dumber website: eftps.gov. What, taxes.gov was taken? (At least somebody at the Treasury has a clue.)

Then there’s the site itself. The front is ugly and dumb: doesn’t the “E” mean electronic? Do we really need to call it EFTPS-Online? Would anyone want to bookmark that page? Why does the “Enter” button have what appears to be a down arrow? And why is the next page (that I see) on a .com address? Instead of eftpsnorth.com, shouldn’t I see north.eftps.gov, in order to ensure I am still in the relatively secure .gov domain?

And don’t even get me started on the rest of the site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 13th, 2003 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.