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Block: DIY eFiles Artificially High

Increases in self-prepared efiles reported by the Internal Revenue Service are artificially high, H&R Block said this month. The company said in reporting its results for the year ended April 30 that the DIY total has been pushed up by those seeking government assistance

Block made its analysis on results reported by the IRS for the season through June 5 which showed assisted efiles were down 15 percent and self-prepared efiles up 7 percent compared to the period ended June 7, 2019.

However, the IRS DIY totals include those who typically do not file but did so this year to receive stimulus payments.

“We believe the vast majority of these returns were completed through the IRS's fillable form site, which is inflating the number of DIY returns in the market,” CEO Jeff Jones said during the webcast for the fiscal 2020 results.

Excluding those returns leaves the DIY efiles down about 4 percent for the same period, Jones reported.

Numbers reported by the IRS for the season through June 12 show slight improvement from the prior week. There were 136,509,000 returns received through that period, a drop of 5.3 percent from 144,125,000 for the season through June 14, 2019. The 63,110,000 efiles submitted by tax professionals for the reported season were 13.8 percent lower than the 73,217,000 a. year earlier. Self-prepared efiles totaled 60,874,000, up 7.7 percent from 56,504,000.

Similarly, refunds remain behind last season’s pace. The IRS issued 92,162,000 through June 12, a decline of 11.8 percent from 104,452,000 year earlier.

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