There were still three more days to file tax returns when the In three of four major reporting categories, the percentage decrease from a year ago was worst of this tax season. The exception was the 70,064,000 efiled by tax professionals, down 5.3 percent from 66,361,000 was only the third worst for the season to date. That category had been off 9.3 percent and 7.3 percent in the first and second weekly reports for the 2016 tax season respectively.
Total returns received fell by 5.8 percent 124,616,000 from 132,268,000 while total returns processed dropped 4.9 percent to 119,923,000 from 126,121,000.
The most surprising change was the drop in self-prepared efiled returns, which fell to 47,041,000 from 48,702,000. This was the first time the totals in this category went into the negative area. The worst performance in the self-prepared area before this was for the first weekly report this season for the period ended February 5 when the self-prepared totals were 2.2-percent ahead of the period ended February 6, 2015.
While the pace had been falling for self-prepared efiles for the last three weeks, the report for the period ended April 8 had showed 41,725,000 returns, a 2.3-percent improvement over 40,783,000 a year earlier.
