But as has been the case in weekly reports since the first one, the gap continues to close. In this case, there were 93,675,000 returns received by the IRS, a decline of 4.1 from 97,631,000 in the prior year's corresponding period. For the March 24 report, the totals were down by 4.7 percent.

Total efiled returns fell 3.8 percent to 86,595,000 from 89,973,000. Efiles from tax professionals totaled 86,595,000, off 3.8 percent from 89,973,000. There were 48,646,000 professionally prepared efiles, a decline of 4.6 percent from 51,014,000 a year ago.

There were 37,949,000 self-prepared eflles as of March 31, down 2.6 percent from 38,959,000. The totals were down by 5.9 percent and 2.6 percent respectively.

The average refund for the season through $2,897, a decline of 1.1 percent from $2,866,