The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) recently released an interim report detailing the 2016 tax filing season. Below are some of the salient details.
The report noted that, as of March 4, 2016, approximately 67 million tax returns were filed. Most of those returns—62.6 million (93.9 percent)—were filed electronically. Approximately four million (6.1 percent) were filed on paper. For calendar year 2016, the IRS expects to receive more than 150 million individual income tax returns, with 131 million of those filed electronically. The IRS issued 53.5 million refunds, which totaled more than $160 billion.
The Affordable Care Act also made an appearance in the report, with more than 2.7 million taxpayers reporting shared responsibility payments, with the total reaching $1 billion for not maintaining required health insurance coverage. Concerning premium tax credits, “[a]s of February 25, 2016, the IRS processed 1.4 million tax returns that reported $4 billion in PTCs that were either received in advance or claimed at the time of filing.”
The report also commented that, “[a]s of March 5, 2016, the IRS reports that it identified 42,148 tax returns with $227 million claimed in fraudulent refunds and prevented the issuance of $180.6 million (79.6 percent) in fraudulent refunds.” Relatedly, because the IRS expanded its use of controls to identify fraudulent refund claims before being accepted, approximately 35,000 e-filed and 741 paper returns were identified as fraudulent. On the identify theft front, “[t]he IRS identified and confirmed 31,578 fraudulent tax returns involving identify theft as of February 29, 2016.”
However, the report also noted that “[t]he IRS was challenged by the late passage of legislation that extended a number of expired tax provisions.” But, the report also noted that the IRS "monitored the status of the legislation and took steps to implement the extension of these provisions prior to their enactment." Consequently, the IRS was able to start tax season, as scheduled, on January 19, 2016.
On the customer service front, TIGTA noted that, as of March 5, 2016, approximately 46.1 million taxpayers contacted the IRS by calling various toll-free telephone assistance lines. The report continues, “IRS assistors have answered 7.3 million calls and provided a 72.8 percent Level of Service with a 9.6 minute Average Speed of Answer.”
You can read the full report here, TIGTA, Interim Results of the 2016 Filing Season (Mar. 31, 2016), Reference Number: 2016-40-034.
Robert Wood has more on the tax fraud aspects of the report here.
