The 2025 tax filing season has been reaching its early, albeit risqué, peak, with the IRS indicating that the annual tax filing season in 2025 has been slightly better than the previous year, thanks in part to continued staffing adjustments.
### filings have dropped slightly, yet there’s still a trend toward readiness for filing.
The 2025 filing season saw the IRS receiving fewer individual income tax returns compared to the previous year. Specifically, as of April 4, 2025, the IRS handled 101,422,000 individual returns, compared to 101,849,000 in the following year. The drop is minimal, just 0.4%, but this drop is less concerning compared to the 8%, 9%, or 10% of returns that are processed much later in the year. The key takeaway is that 427,000 fewer individual returns were filed in 2025 compared to 2024.
The_erliest endpoint filing process, known as e-filed returns, has seen a slight improvement. As of April 4, 2025, the IRS processed 100,324,000 individual returns, up from 100,110,000 in 2024. However, while the number of e-filed returns is slightly higher, it’s still just 0.2% less than the previous year. Of these e-filed returns, the IRS reported that 53,392,000 were filed by tax professionals, and 44,792,000 were filed using the self-prepared e-filed returns.
The vast majority of e-filed returns were structured for individuals, with tax professionals being the top providers. In contrast, self-filed returns were in short supply, with only 49,358,000 submissions from the end of 2024. Tax professionals, on the other hand, have become the dominant force in filing returns, with professionals filing 53 million more e-filed returns than tax professionals in 2024.
### Web visits continue to lag behind
The IRS website’s traffic during the 2025 filing season is still up. As of April 4, the IRS had seen 275 million total visits, compared to 497 thousand visits by March 22, 2024. While this represents a 45% decline, the percentage change tends to peak during the first few weeks of the filing season. In the last week of 2014, the number of e-filed returns was roughly on par with the number of e-filed returns from the previous year, but at the beginning, it was nearly as high.
The website has been regularly updating from early 2024 to early 2025. It has seen a decrease in near-daily press releases in 2025, as the IRS is adopting a new analytics model for traffic tracking. As a result, managing and analyzing website traffic has become more challenging, and the IRS has not yet suspended any of its operations.
### Tax refund status remains the most popular method for af Reporting
In the filing season, answers from taxpayers about their tax refund status remain the most common action a扶持 of the IRS website. The Where’s My Refund tool is an optional interface for taxpayers to check the status of their refunds. The IRS estimates that about 68% of all tax returns in 2025 resulted in a refund, which is less than in 2024 (71%) but still a significant chunk.
The total number of refunds processed in 2025 was 67,745,000, up from 66,799,000 in the same period in 2024, leading an increase of 1.4%. This indicates that most refunds are being processed early in the filing season, particularly for returns filed earlier. The average tax refund now stands at $3,116 per taxpayer, up from $3,011 in 2024, a 3.5% increase. However, the IRS noted that there was a slight dip from the previous year’s $3,453, though this was likely due to lower overall refunds.
The average refund issued by direct deposit has also increased in 2025 to $3,186, up from $3,088 in the same period the previous year, due to stronger collections and reduced collections over the prior four-week period.
### Diplomats of the filing season are popping up again
The official Federal deadline for tax filing in 2025 is April 15. As of April 4, 2025, the IRS is expected to receive approximately 140 million individual income tax returns for this year, with this number set as the spot for its annual reporting. The official deadline will be stringent due to a 2010 tax requirement that specified that certain federal tax obligation preparers, such as CECs and FICRA, were expected to e-file certain returns during the entire filing period.
### Conclusion
The filing season is reaching its early peak with the IRS consistently improving with e-filed returns, despite staffing changes and traffic updates. Tax professionals remain the main streamers of returns, while the Where’s My Refund tool continues to be the most popular way for taxpayers to check their refunds. The 2025 filing season thus ends with the IRS seeing a Tribulation of solutions, relief in e-filed returns, and expectation that the tax-filing season will be better in 2026.
