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Returns for 2017 Fall Short

irsThe Internal Revenue Service and many industry observers expected returns filed this year would exceed 2016 totals by 1 percent. Instead, the total fell .7-percent short as a last minute surge of 135.6 million returns did not overcome the gap between this year through April 21 and last year's corresponding period as efiled returns from paid professionals dropped but the self-prepared total rose slightly.

 

Last year, the gap was overcome by the late filers and pushed the season ahead of 2015 by .9 percent for the week ended April 22 for the first time that season. By the time the week of Dec. 2, 2016 ended, the total returns received were up 1 percent.

It look as though the 2017 season would repeat the pattern and it appears that the tendency towards late filing is the new norm, no matter the result. Instead, the 135,638,000 returns through the most recent IRS report fell short of 136,528,000 filed a year earlier.

There were 122,164,000 efiled returns through April 21, down .3 percent from 122,546,000 a year earlier. The drop came from efiles prepared by tax professionals, which fell to 70,401,000, down .7 percent from 70,864,000. There were 51,763,000 self-prepared efiles, an increase of .2 percent from 51,682,000. And that totally is probably attributable solely to Intuit whose sales of TurboTax units were up 2 percent.

As was the case for the entire season, the only other set of statistics to rise involved refunds. The IRS sent out slightly less than $268.3 billion, an increase of 1.9 percent from just under $263.2 billion last year. The average refund grew 1.9 percent to $2,763 from $2,711.

The size of direct deposit of returns showed even stronger growth. Direct deposits for the most recently ended reporting period hit 81,646,000, up .7 percent from 81,221,000 a year earlier. The IRS refunded $239.41 billion up 2.2 percent from$234.27 billion. The average refund in this category was $2,932, a 1.7-percent increase from $2,884 the prior year.

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