There were 136,528,000 returns filed as of April 22, an increase of 1.7 percent from 134,209,000 returns filed for the period through April 24, 2016.  Total returns processed hit 129,456,000, up .9 percent from the year earlier 128,317,000.

That compares to the prior week's report in which the 124,616,000 returns filed trailed 2015 by 5.8 percent and the 119,923,000 processed, which was 4.9 percent lower than the prior year. That means slightly more than 11.9 million returns were filed between the two weekly reports.

The biggest turnaround was in returns efiled by tax professionals. Those numbers had been behind last year's figures in all 11 weekly returns issued previously. But for the April 22 report, the tax pros contributed 70,864,000 efiled returns, an increase of .5 percent over 70,491,000.

Self-prepared efiled returns were ahead of 2015 in every weekly report except for the April tally when they fell behind last year by 5.3 percent, but as of April 22 that category had rebounded to 51,682,000 returns, an increase of 5.7 percent over 48,911,000 returns in last year's corresponding period.

Bob Scott

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Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind