Tax Filing Season: efile Tax Returns Statistics (by Tax Year): Percent of Taxes efiled by year
June 2,
2017 by Jane Chero in General 
This is the first factoid in a series of four factoids detailing the growing emergence of a tax refund season. Many home furnishings advertising and sales events throughout the year focus either on a national holiday or “end of season” promotion. National holidays presumably give consumers an extra day to get out and shop and “end of season” events help retailers clear inventory off floors to make room for new merchandise. Only recently taking form across all consumer products is a sales event that focuses on when consumers actually have extra money to spend.
Thanks to the proliferation of efiling and the increased sophistication of IRS processing, last year $318 billion in tax refund dollars poured into direct deposit accounts and home mailboxes of 111 million tax filers earlier than ever before.
efiling has revolutionized the way people get refunds. In fact, mailing in tax forms is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The percentage of tax filers efiling tax returns has grown from 30.7 percent in 2001 to 91.0% in 2016 - a climb of 60.3 percentage points. With the IRS currently issuing refunds within 9 to 14 days after receipt of a tax file, filers can receive direct deposits as early as the first week of February. The next factoid will focus on 2016 filing seasons statistics: how many filers received refunds, total dollars refunded by month, and the average refund per tax filer.
Source: Internal Revenue Service (IRS), *Data is from May 2016