irs web traffic surges 22%.
how’s covid-19 impacting your firm?
join the survey. sound off. get answers.
by beth bellor
if you’re looking for bright spots as the united states deals with the global pandemic, avert your eyes from the irs.
more: the tax season 2020 dumpster fire | tax pros fall behind 6.2% in returns filed | tax pros trail by 908,000 returns
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
although average refunds and website visits are up, everything else is down – in the case of e-filings by tax professionals, down 20.1 percent. yeowch.
for the week ending april 10, the latest data available, the internal revenue service had received 104 million individual income tax returns, down 12.9 percent from the same period in 2019. it had processed 97.8 million returns, down 15.5 percent.
the agency’s processing rate, however, was 94.1 percent, nearly its usual pace.
e-filings
the irs had received 96.8 million e-filed returns, down 13.1 percent. tax professionals handled 50.5 million, down 20.1 percent, and even self-prepared returns dipped, by 3.8 percent to 46.3 million.
the pros held 52.2 percent of the e-filing market.
website visits
visits to irs.gov at 487 million were up 21.9 percent.
refunds
refunds numbered 77.3 million, down 8.5 percent, in the total amount of $220.4 billion, down 6.6 percent. average refunds at $2,852 were up 2 percent.
direct deposit refunds numbered 64.8 million, down 13.2 percent, in the total amount of $194.2 billion, down 11 percent. average direct deposit refunds at $2,999 were up 2.6 percent.