Mixed Reviews for Pa.’s New Tax Filing System
As myPATH replaces E-Tides, some taxpayers complain of slow customer service. Professional groups say it’s going better than past state technology upgrades.
Pennsylvania stopped taking payments[in February] on its 22-year-old E-Tides online tax filing system and marched the last business taxpayers onto its replacement — myPATH, as in “My Pennsylvania Tax Hub,” intended to simplify filing the state’s many business taxes.
How’s it going? The state and leaders of tax-professional groups say it’s an improvement. But some users and tax professionals say the transition hasn’t been easy.
“What we’re hearing is a mixed bag,” said Mitchell Gerstein, senior tax counsel at Isdaner & Co., certified public accountants in Bala Cynwyd. “We have received quite a lot of feedback from clients who struggled to migrate their data from E-Tides to myPATH.”
When a taxpayer is properly plugged in, the new system is “user-friendly,” with plenty of deadline reminders, Gerstein said. But submissions of annual W-2 employee tax forms — to a location that’s hard to find in the system and where it’s harder to confirm that data are correct — has tripped up some users.