The 2024 tax season began on January 29 and is already in its third week. The IRS has paid out a growing amount of tax refunds, although the overall amount of refunds issued in 2024 is less than that of 2023 during the same period.
If a taxpayer files electronically and selects direct deposit, they should typically get their refund in 21 days, according to the IRS. However, the IRS had already awarded over 20.8 million refunds by February 16, 3 weeks into the tax filing season.
In contrast, as of February 17, 2023, the IRS had issued nearly 27.7 million refunds. Yet, tax season began 6 days earlier on January 23 of last year, giving the IRS over a week more to get, process, and mail out refunds for tax returns.
This is the IRS’s current year performance. To learn more about taxes, view our comprehensive guide to 2024 tax filing, our guide on tracking your refund with the IRS, and our list of the top tax software for 2024.
As of 2024, how many tax returns have the IRS processed?
34.5 million federal income tax returns had been processed as of February 16, according to the IRS, a 6% decrease from the 36.7 million returns it had at this time the previous year. Because tax season began on January 23, 2023, rather than January 29, as in previous years, filers got an extra 6 days to file their returns.
And by February 16, the IRS had gotten 34.7 million returns, which is 5.7% fewer than the 36.8 million it had acquired by the same date.
To what extent has the IRS refunded taxes?
As of February 16, the IRS had granted over 20.8 million refunds; this represents a 24.8% decrease from the 27.7 million refunds it had provided by February 17, 2023.
This week, a statement with weekly statistics from the IRS stated that the overall amount of refunds issued corresponds to returns that were accepted and completed in 2024. According to an IRS representative who spoke with CNET, the quantity of direct deposit refunds might include returns from previous years that have been handled this year.