Have you paid your taxes yet?

It may seem like a silly question to ask on April 16, but of course the deadline this year is Monday, April 18, (except in Massachusetts and Maine, where Monday is Patriot’s Day, so some New Englanders actually have until Tuesday EOD.)

If you do owe money of course you can send in a paper check. Or, you can file electronically. Increasingly Americans are doing that, roughly some 153 million out of 163 million individual returns this year, and have the IRS debit your account.

Or, (and I didn’t know this), you can pay cash at a participating retailer, as they say, such as Dollar General, Family Dollar, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, Pilot Travel Centers, 7-Eleven, Speedway, Kum & Go, Royal Farms, Go Mart, Kwik Trip.

The IRS has an instruction page here on how to pay cash, which looks pretty straightforward. I wondered if there was a fee for using this service and yes, by golly there is, a modest one, but a fee nonetheless of $1.50.

The IRS page notes the payment goes to a company called VanillaDirect, whose website says: ‘Sign up for the easy way to pay bills by cash*’ (*‘Service fee applies.’) The site further explains that VanillaDirect allows customers to pay utility bills, insurance companies and long distance companies — and the IRS — with cash using its payment system.

Who owns or runs VanillaDirect? I didn’t see an ‘about us’ on the site, but at the bottom in small type a notice reads: “VanillaDirect is provided by InComm Financial Services California, Inc. and by InComm Financial Services, Inc….”

Parent company InComm Payments describes itself as “a pioneer in point-of-sale (POS) technology." InComm holds a key patent that protects a computer-implemented method for activating, deactivating, and redeeming prepaid cards at POS terminals.

Also, “the company pioneered the concept of prepaid, gift, and store value products such as wireless refill cards and iTunes cards. It also helps 'connect major retailers with product providers across the retail industry.'”