Electronic Filing Off To Strong Start, Says IRS

by Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax-News.com, Washington

04 March 2008

The US Internal Revenue Service announced on Monday that e-file is off to a strong start in 2008, with more than 38 million tax returns filed electronically so far.

The 2008 e-file level is up 5% from the 36 million returns filed for the same period last year, with double digit growth coming from taxpayers filing from their home computers, the tax authority explained.

“E-filing continues to be the preferred way to file your tax return. It is the fast, easy, safe and more accurate way to file your tax return,” announced IRS Acting Commissioner Linda E. Stiff.

According to the new filing season statistics for the week ending February 22nd, 2008, one of the biggest areas of growth - as previously stated - is returns electronically filed from home computers. More than 12.3 million returns were filed from home, an increase of almost 14% from the same time last year.

Overall, 46.9 million tax returns have been filed so far in 2008, a 1.5% increase from the 46.2 million returns that had been filed at the same point in 2007.

As for the total amount of all refunds, USD106.7bn has been issued so far in 2008, with the average refund amount of USD2,708, up 2% from the same time last year.

So far this year, the IRS has directly deposited 33 million refunds out of the total of 39 million refunds. The direct deposit refunds were valued at just over USD96bn, with the average amount of a direct deposit refund of USD2,900.

People are also visiting the IRS Web site in record numbers; the IRS has recorded more than 72 million unique visits to IRS.gov this year, up from about 67 million for the same period last year, an increase of 8%.

Recommended