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Over the past 20 years, Americans' taxes have been filed electronically 800 million times. This year alone, more than half of all taxpayers are expected to go the paperless route.

"Well, the reality is, over 95 million Americans e-filed last year, so, it is sort of mainstream now," says Turbo Tax Vice President Bob Meighan.

The benefits of "e-filing" extend beyond simply avoiding the line at the post office. For one thing, there's less room for error.

"Traditional tax returns have an error rate of 20 percent, whereas returns that are filed electronically have an error rate of less than 1 percent," says IRS spokeswoman Dianne Besunder.

The fraction of a percent of taxpayers with filing errors can have their mistakes caught and corrected much quicker.

"E-filing is good because it verifies a lot of the information that you put on your return pretty much instantaneously. Because you know about the mistake relatively quickly, you can correct those problems," says certified public accountant Alan Straus. "If you make those mistakes and send the form in, you may not hear from them for a couple of months, and then you have to start correcting the problems. So it's going to just delay the process."

Refunds can also arrive faster for taxpayers who go paperless roundtrip, meaning they file the return electronically and also authorize the IRS to electronically deposit the refund directly into their bank accounts. That way, the money could arrive in eight to 10 days.

"And that's really what you want, the key is getting the money back into your pocket as quickly as possible," says Meighan. "You're not waiting on a check to be mailed to you and then having, you know, the hassle of going to the bank to deposit it."

You also don't have to worry about that check getting lost in the mail, or falling into an abyss the IRS calls "the undeliverable refunds."

"Every year, usually in the late fall, the IRS goes out and tries to find taxpayers who we've prepared a refund check and mailed it to their homes and it was returned to us by the post office," says Besunder. "And the average amount of their refunds was close to $1,500. So, you know, this can be a significant thing."

E-filing does not necessarily mean that the taxpayer files the tax return alone. Most CPAs and national chains file returns electronically, and all taxpayers have to do is sign a form giving the tax preparer authorization to e-file on one's behalf.