With the number of returns filed during 2018 up 1.4 percent from 2017, this year’s total makes up for last year’s unexpected weakness. Returns filed last year fell .5 percent from the 2016 totals but this year’s filed returns exceeded results for both 2017 and 2016.
Internal Revenue Service statistics show 141,531,000 returns filed from the beginning of the 2018 season through May 13, compared to 139,586,000 for the season through May 12, 2017. The 2018 total is .9 percent greater than the 140,250,000 returns filed through May 13, 2016.
The other story for recent tax seasons is the continuing growth of the self-prepared market. There were 53,929,000 self-prepared efiles for the most recently ended period, 42.3 percent of the total 126,040,000 to date in 2018. In 2017, there were 51,997,000 self-prepared efiles out of 123,737,000, or 42 percent of the total.
During the similar period in 2013 there were 43,469,000 efiled returns, which represented 38.3 percent of the total 113,549,000 efiles. That means in five years, the number of self-prepared efiles has risen by 4 percentage points. That’s a 10-percent gain over that period.
