IRS numbers from the 11th week of the tax filing season—the week ending April 11, 2025—confirm that tax filings lag behind the numbers from last year. With just a few days before the end of the filing season, the number of tax returns received dipped again, a trend that hasn’t changed since the season opened on January 27, 2025.
In January, the IRS noted that it expects more than 140 million individual tax returns for tax year 2024 to be filed by the April 15, 2025, federal deadline.
(The data that includes the last day of the filing season, April 15, 2025, will be available on April 25, 2025. The IRS reports the filing data for each week based on the prior week’s numbers.)
Filing and Processing Dips
The most recent tax season filing data from IRS shows that the agency still hasn’t received as many tax returns this year as last year. The data shows that the IRS received 117,588,000 individual income tax returns as of April 11, 2025, compared to 116,295,000 as of April 12, 2024. The dip is 1.7%, with nearly two millions individual tax returns filed to date in 2025 as compared to 2024.
Those numbers do not include taxpayers who filed for an extension or who have been granted an automatic extension due to a federally declared disaster. Those include individuals and businesses in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and parts of Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia affected by severe storms and flooding from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton who have until May 1, 2025, to file. Individuals and businesses affected by wildfires and straight-line winds in southern California have until October 15, 2025, to file. Earlier this month, the IRS also announced extensions for individuals and businesses affected by severe storms in Tennessee and Arkansas—they have until November 3, 2025, to file.
Extensions also apply to individuals and businesses impacted by terrorist attacks in Israel—they have until September 30, 2025,
And, individuals living and working abroad have until June 16, 2025, to file their 2024 federal income tax return and pay any tax due.
Despite staffing cuts, the IRS is generally keeping pace on the processing side. The data shows that the IRS has processed 116,295,000 individual income tax returns as of April 11, 2025, compared to 118,114,000 individual income tax returns as of April 12, 2024. That’s a decrease of 1.5%.
Most of those returns were e-filed. So far in 2025, the IRS has received 113,907,000 e-filed returns, compared to 115,734,000 in 2024. That’s a drop of 1.6%. Of those, the IRS reported that it received 62,803,000 individual income returns e-filed by tax professionals and 51,104,000 self prepared e-filed returns.
Most tax professionals will e-file your return—not only are some required to e-file (a 2010 requires specified tax return preparers to e-file certain federal income tax returns), the IRS says that e-filing is more secure and more likely to be accurate. As National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins put it when recommending e-filing: “Paper is the IRS’ kryptonite.”
While a few weeks ago, the number of e-filed returns prepared by professionals was nearly neck and neck with the number of e-filed returns that was self-prepared, tax professionals now have the clear edge. That makes sense since taxpayers who have simple returns often e-file early, while those taxpayers with more complicated returns tend to rely on their tax professionals to file.
Web Visits
Web visits to IRS.gov continued lag far behind last year’s numbers. There have been 296,470,000 visits to the website as of April 11, 2025, compared to 533,981,000 visits by April 12, 2024.
Those numbers reflect a drop of about 45% but you won’t see that statistic on the IRS website. For most of the tax season, the percentage drop was calculated. A footnote on the website now reads, “Changes were made from 2024 to 2025 in the analytics methodology used to evaluate the number of visits to IRS.gov. Previously a session-based approach was used. In 2025, an event-based model is being used. As a result, comparison of data sets from year to year should not be made.”
A session-based approach tracks users within a defined timeframe and includes metrics like page views, bounce rate, and traffic source. If you have a blog or website, this is akin to what you learn from a platform like Universal Analytics.
In contrast, an event-based approach tracks the kinds of actions that a user takes, like clicks and form submissions. This is similar to what you’d learn using a platform like the newer Google Analytics.
Tax Refunds
Taxpayers are still seeing upticks are related to tax refunds.
The total number of tax refunds edged up to 74,858,000 in 2025, compared to 74,685,000 in the same period last year, an increase of just .2%. By the numbers, that means that approximately 64% of all tax returns that have been processed to date resulted in a refund.
The average tax refund is up as compared to last year: $2,948 per taxpayer as of April 11, 2025, compared to $3,055 as of April 12, 2024, a boost of 3.6%. The average refund issued by direct deposit increased to $3,129 in 2025 compared to $3,031 for the same time period last year.
(While refund numbers are up compared to last year, there’s a little bit of a dip compared to earlier in the year when they hit $3,453. The higher refund numbers are typically attributed to early filers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit.)
Read the full article here