One simple tip to turn a difficult time of year into something good (for our water)

by Jonathan A. Scott (twitter handle @jscottnh) Sorry, no tips here for dealing with extreme winter weather or the spring that never seems to come. This is about the dreaded lead-in to mid-April. Not the Earth Month part of April, or Earth Day itself. Those are great and well worth looking forward to. No, I mean the blood, sweat and tears of preparing annual income tax returns, which add up to by far this season’s biggest ordeal for many of us, myself included.

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Here’s one way you can reduce some of the painful red and bring some soothing greens and healthy blue colors into the mix. This year, file your taxes online, for a change. The tools available to help you make the transition have come a long way in the past few years. The paper you save by filing electronically means more trees left standing, less climate-changing pollution and cleaner water – all in one simple step. The process itself gets you your refund waaay sooner (fingers crossed, you certainly have a big check coming, once you get your returns filed). We asked our partners at We-Care.com to compile some good deals on all of the leading products to help you get the dreaded job done. What I like about these is that whichever one you choose using the below links generates an automatic donation for Clean Water Action, at the same time it’s potentially saving you money, time and heartache.

• Clean Water Action Tax Center (9% Donation/$.50 per free file) brought to you by Turbo Tax
• Turbo Tax's ItsDeductible (9% Donation/$.50 per free file) helps you track your yearly donations so you can easily prepare to file your taxes with the maximum deductible
• H&R Block (9% Donation/$.50 per free file)
• eSmart Tax (10% Donation/$.50 per Basic Edition)
• FreeTaxUSA (25% Donation)

Yes, we would still love it if you decide to send a nice portion of the refund(s) you have coming this year to Clean Water Action, as a direct donation to this great cause. That would be fabulous and it’s something you should seriously consider doing. But in the meantime, the donation you make just by choosing one of the e-filing tax tools linked from this post is automatic, and it won’t cost you a penny. What are you waiting for? Jonathan A. Scott is director of corporate relations for Clean Water Action Get started with Clean Water Action’s We-Care.com program to access thousands of deals and more opportunities to benefit Clean Water Action whenever you shop online. Fun Fact: purchases of tax prep and e-filing software via We-Care.com raise almost as much for Clean Water Action as online purchases around "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" but with a fraction of the environmental footprint.