The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it has now passed the one billion mark for individual tax returns processed through its electronic filing (or e-filing) program.
Despite the fact that we tend to throw around the “b” word left and right these days when talking about taxes, the deficit and the budget, a billion is still a huge number. To put it into perspective, if you were to count one number every second, it would take you 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds to reach a billion. That’s longer than the e-filing program has been around.
E-filing started as a pilot project in 1986 (you can read the history and study results here as a pdf) when 25,000 were filed online. The program expanded across the country in 1990.
More recently, the IRS expected about 95 million individual taxpayers to file their 2010 tax returns. However, even before the 2011 due date, more than 100 million individual tax returns had been e-filed during tax season. That number represents about 79% of taxpayers, just under the 80% goal that Congress set for the program.
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said about the most recent achievement:
IRS e-file is a good deal for taxpayers. The one billion milestone means e-file has delivered real services to taxpayers, including faster refunds and more accurate tax returns.
How fast? The IRS estimates that, with e-file, you can get your refund in as few as ten days. Traditional paper returns can take between three and six weeks to process.
How accurate? The IRS claims that taxpayers who file online have an error rate of just 1% compared with 20% for taxpayers filing with a traditional paper return.
Shulman added:
And because an e-file return costs us 20 times less to process than a paper return, this program means a more efficient government that has saved America’s taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Wow. The government aiming for efficiency and tax savings. Imagine that.
