Kentucky works toward 100 percent electronic tax filing.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

LEXINGTON, Ky. _ If you're one of the thousands of Kentucky residents still twiddling your thumbs and dreaming of how you'll spend your tax refund check, consider this:

If you had filed electronically, you could have already spent that money.

Quick returns on returns, state and national officials say, is a prime reason the government encourages people to file electronically. Another timesaver is that refund checks can be deposited directly into bank accounts with electronic returns.

Nearly 603,000 Kentuckians and about 46 million people nationwide have filed their 2001 returns electronically.

The state's electronic filing program ...