After the tax season started with returns at lower levels than in 2015, observers expected results would improve. But total returns remained off from the beginning and then registered only a tiny increase for the period ended March 11. Then for the season through March 18, total returns dropped slightly as did the percentage efiled by paid preparers.Meanwhile, the increases registered for self-prepared returns improved over the last year's tax season through March 20.
Total returns received by the Internal Revenue Service, barely changed for the March 11 report—rising by only 1,000 efiled returns over 2015—dropped by .4 percent to 81,960,000 and returns processed fell by 1 percent to 79,631,000 returns for the March 18 statistics, compared to the year-earlier totals.
Since the first week, when efiled returns by professionals were off by 9.1 percent, the gap had narrowed each week until the March 4 report. For that period, the paid preparer totals were off by 2.5 percent and stayed that way for the March 11 tally. However, for the most recently reported period, the number of returns efiled by paid preparers dropped by 2.7 percent over the prior year to 41,558,000
Self-prepared efiles had seen growth accelerate each week until the March 11 report when they peaked at 4.1 percent over 2015 totals. In the most recent report, there were, 34,654,000 DIY efiles, up 4 percent from the corresponding period a year earlier.
