"

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 22 seconds

Tax Season: Everything Starts Down

tax formThe government shutdown impacted the start of the current tax season as every statistic released by the Internal Revenue Service for the first time for 2018 was down. But this year, the key metric may be the average refund as a measure of the impact of the new tax law.

Average refunds were $1,865 for the week ended February 1, down 8.3 percent from an average of $2,035 for the period ending Feb 2, 2018. Beyond that the number of returns received, process and the number of refunds issued were all down by double digits over 2018’s comparable period.

For the season to date, the IRS has received 16,035,000 returns, a drop of 12.4 percent from 18,302,000, a year earlier. The number of returns processed fell by 25.8 percent to 13,306,000 from 17,931,000. 

Efiling receipts fell to 15,222,000 through February 1, off 13.1 percent, from 17,518,000 for last year through February 2. Efiles from tax professionals dropped 19.3 percent to 5,440,000 from 6,744,000. Self-prepared  returns reached  9,782,000, a decrease of 9.2 percent from 10,774,000.

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
Read 1803 times
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Visit other PMG Sites:

Template Settings

Color

For each color, the params below will give default values
Tomato Green Blue Cyan Dark_Red Dark_Blue

Body

Background Color
Text Color

Header

Background Color

Footer

Select menu
Google Font
Body Font-size
Body Font-family
Direction
PMG360 is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal data we collect from our subscribers/agents/customers/exhibitors and sponsors. On May 25th, the European's GDPR policy will be enforced. Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed, however, we have made a few changes. We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect, how and why we collect it.