Tuesday, May 4, 2004
The just-released Statistics of Income Bulletin (Winter 2003-04) includes Projections of Returns That Will Be Filed in Calendar Years 2004-2010 by Terry Manzi. Here is the abstract:
The Internal Revenue Service estimates that the total number of tax returns to be filed in 2004 will reach 226.8 million. With an estimated annual growth rate of 1.6 percent under current tax law and other planning assumptions, the total number expected by 2010 should reach 249.7 million. These totals are comprised of “primary” returns (mostly individual income tax and employment tax returns) and “supplemental” returns (mostly amended returns and documents filed by individuals and corporations requesting extensions of time to file returns). Primary returns account for 92.2 percent of the grand total.
The most recent projection of electronically-filed (“e-file”) individual income tax returns calls for 59.8 million to be filed in 2004 (out of 131.6 million total of all individual income tax returns); these returns would otherwise be filed on “paper” forms, mostly “short forms” 1040A or 1040EZ. Of the 59.8 million electronically-filed total, about 55.8 million are expected to be “standard” e-file returns, transmitted through an authorized third party, such as a tax practitioner. The remaining 3.9 million should be “TeleFile” returns, filed by touch-tone telephone. Standard e-file returns are expected to increase at an annual rate of 8.9 percent through 2010.
TeleFile volumes, unlike standard e-file, are expected to drop an average 0.8 percent by 2010 due to migration to other e-file options. As electronically-filed returns increase, the total number of paper individual income tax returns should drop to about 49.4 million by 2010, with the corresponding number of electronically-filed returns increasing to 92.4 million.
For a related Excel table of data, see here. For more return projections, see here.
Over the coming week, TaxProf Blog will summarize the remaining Featured Articles and Data Releases in the latest SOI and provide links to the full reports and accompanying tables and statistics.
