Do-it-yourself taxpayers continued to feed the growth in the number of tax returns for the current tax season. However, the market is catching up with the backlog created by the January 31 site and the total number of returns filed through March 7 is only one-tenth of a percent ahead of the totals for 2013 through March 8.There have been 27.4 million self-prepared returns efiled for the latest period covered statistics released by the Internal Revenue Service. That's up 5.8 percent over last year's corresponding period. Meanwhile, the total efiled by professional preparers dropped by 2.2 percent to 34.8 million. That came after the pros seemed to be narrowing the gap over 2013, having started the year off by 5.6 percent in the first report issued by the IRS. The number of efiled returns is about 93 percent of all filing.
The number of refunds and aggregate amount paid out to taxpayers stayed above the 2013 levels. There were 55.4 million refunds, up 3.7 percent, and $164.6 billion refunded, up 6.4 percent for the tax season through March 7.