SnapTax: File your taxes with your iPhone

In science fiction books and movies, the phone of the future was often portrayed as being able to help users buy stuff, find a date, and even do taxes.

So far, they've gotten the dating and buying stuff right and now, if you live in California, you can file your taxes on your phone.

Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, will be releasing a new iPhone application for residents of California which will let them file their state and local taxes on their iPhone. The app isn't available yet but should be released by the end of the month.

The SnapTax app allows you to take a picture of your W-2, which the app can read and pull out the important information in order to auto-populate the correct fields in SnapTax.

After a few questions, you'll see how big of a refund you are getting and can preview the 1040EZ for any errors. If you are satisfied with it you can press file and you're done with taxes for the year.
SnapTax is meant for the roughly 70% of tax filers who would normally file a simple return on a form like the 1040EZ and isn't meant for complex tax situations. That said, if SnapTax finds that you owe the IRS money you can still e-file with the App and send in a paper check to fulfill your tax obligation.

SnapTax will be available later this January and is expected to retail for $9.99, which includes the fees for filing both state and federal taxes for California residents.

According to Colleen Gatlin, a spokeswoman for Intuit, SnapTax is being tested in California this year and the company would certainly consider offering it to more states or including other tax situations in the future.

If you don't live in California you can still use the TurboTax TaxCaster App that, with the help of a few simple questions, will provide you with an estimate of how much you will receive back from the government this year.