If you aren’t an American citizen or subject to the Inland Revenue Service of the USA, you can probably afford to skip this app.
As the name suggests, IRS2Go is the official mobile app of the IRS. It allows you to interact with the tax collecting service wherever you are on the planet.
You can check your refund status, hand over your hard-earned, and sign up for useful tax tips.
In addition, you can use the app to obtain a login security code and sign up for all the latest news from America’s favorite federal agency. So you may interact with the app slightly more frequently than you might expect outside the regular tax season.
Fast access to many of the most useful tools on the IRS.gov website
Free prep assistance for your tax return
Make payments
Get your refund
Stay up to date with IRS news
Installing the IRS2Go app involves extending several permissions. These are namely:
Location - The official reason for this is that the app having access to your location allows the users to search for the nearest VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) and TCE (Tax Counselling for the Elderly) locations. These are organizations that provide free assistance with tax issues for eligible citizens.
Phone - This one is so the app can automatically dial out to the IRS and VITA, and TCE branches.
Photos/Media/Files - The app wants to use one or more of these, like your pictures, videos, and audio, and the device’s “external storage.”
It all sounds rather Big Brother-ish on the part of The Man. You would not be unreasonably concerned about these permissions and how they might be used. It depends on your level of paranoia.
However, the app spells out that Photos/Media/Files permission is necessary for the Free Tax Help mapping feature to save data and map images to your phone’s storage. Keeping these files on your phone means the app doesn’t need to download identical map data every single time. So potentially, there’s a data saving for you right there. And saving anything with the help of the IRS is arguably a rarity.
However, you should not dismiss the app’s features:
Refund status - You can check your refund status within 24 hours of having submitted an e-filed return. You can check paper returns after four weeks.
Payments - You can pay the IRS securely directly from your bank account or via credit or debit card.
Free help with your tax - The app contains free tax software to prepare, file, and obtain a refund. Or get free face-to-face advice if you qualify.
Security code - The app can generate security logins for you to login into specific IRS services online rather than receiving them by SMS.
It’s free
Easy to use
Get tax tips by email
It’s available in English and Spanish
Privacy concerns
Limited features
To get started with the IRS2Go app, download it from Google Play, Apple’s App Store, or the Amazon App Store.
