Wow, it feels REALLY weird to have it be April 13th and not be scrambling to finish all kinds of last minute tax returns, file extensions, etc.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be more relaxed or more stressed out!
You feeling some of that too?
This morning I was doing some thinking for our own tax prep offices about what the next few months looks like in terms of staffing, marketing, and service delivery.
These days, I like to look at numbers before I start making any decisions, so I started digging into some of the IRS Filing Statistics.
I thought I’d share a few stats that stood out to me in my review this morning of the 4/3/2020 IRS Filing Statistics:
- Compared to last year, returns e-filed by tax professionals are down by about 11.5%. (Meaning compared to same date last year; April first week this year vs. April first week last year.)
- Self-prepared returns up by 1.8% during that same time period. (Again, meaning compared to same date last year; April first week this year vs. April first week last year.)
- Compared to last year, about 66% of the total e-filed returns that were e-filed over all of last year, have been e-filed as of first week of April. So in other words, if volume of returns stays more or less the same, we have about 34% of tax season “left to go” if you look at all filers.
- Compared to last year, tax pros have prepped about 59% of the total returns we e-filed over all of last year. Meaning that of taxpayers who use tax professionals, we still have about 41% of clients “left to go” (not counting, however, taxpayers who have switched to doing their own taxes over these first few months of 2020).
Conclusions
My conclusion is that definitely we will need to do some effective planning and execution over the remaining months of 2020 to achieve good results despite the current challenges.
We’ll be following with additional training, tools, and support to help you navigate these “extra” months of tax season, but for now just figured these numbers would be helpful to provide a basic visibility on where we are now.
Hope this helps and please remember to subscribe if you want these type of updates in your inbox.
