The 2007 tax filing season set a number of records at the Internal Revenue Service -- highlighted by the more than 76 million electronically filed individual tax returns and more than 140 million visits to the IRS Web site.
This year’s tax season saw a surge in electronic filing among last-minute filers, a group that has traditionally sent in paper returns. During the week that included this year’s tax-filing deadline (April 14-20), the number of electronically filed returns received by the IRS jumped 35 percent over the same week last year, even though the overall number of returns (paper and electronic) received during the same week only rose 12 percent.
New records were also set for the number of returns e-filed by home computer users, the number of balance-due returns filed electronically, and the number and amount of direct-deposit refunds.
Among the highlights of the IRS statistics released:
- The over 76.7 million e-filed returns accepted through May 4 topped the more than 73.2 million electronically filed returns received for all of 2006. That is also an 8.9 percent increase over last year at this time, with most of the increase coming in March and April.
- A record 22 million taxpayers e-filed from a home computer, up 11 percent over the same time last year and eclipsing 2006’s year-long total of 20.3 million.
- This filing season visits to IRS.gov, the agency’s popular Web site, climbed almost 10 percent, to more than 140 million.
- More than 59 million refunds, a new record, were deposited directly into savings, checking and brokerage accounts, representing more than 61 percent of all refunds issued.
- Nearly $158 billion has been directly deposited so far this year, an 11 percent jump over last year at this time, which surpasses the 2006 year-end total of $149.2 billion.
- The number of balance-due returns filed electronically surged 14.2 percent to a record 9.4 million. For all of last year, almost 8.9 million balance-due returns were filed electronically.
