WASHINGTON — The IRS announced Monday, January 29 as the official start date of the 2024 tax season and expects more than 128.7 million tax returns will be filed before the April 15 tax deadline.
The announcement comes as the agency undergoes a massive overhaul in an effort to improve its technology and customer service processes with tens of billions of dollars allocated to the agency through the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law in August 2022.
“As our transformation efforts bear fruit, taxpayers will continue to see marked improvement in IRS operations this coming tax season,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a press release. “IRS employees are working hard to ensure new funding is used to help taxpayers by making the process of preparing and filing taxes easier.”
Agency leadership says more drop-in centers will be open this year to assist taxpayers, enhanced paperless processing will assist with IRS correspondence and enhanced individual online accounts will be available to taxpayers.
Additionally, eligible taxpayers will be able to file their 2023 returns directly with the IRS online through a new electronic direct file pilot. The IRS says it will be rolled out in phases and is expected to be generally available by mid-March.
The IRS expects most refunds to be issued within 21 days.
In previous years, the IRS faced huge backlogs of paper tax returns. In June 2022, the IRS was faced with more than 21 million delinquent paper tax returns, with National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins stating at the time, “The math is daunting.”
As funding increases, the IRS expects a smoother filing season with fewer backlogs, but now sees continued threats of funding cuts.
Last year's debt ceiling and spending cuts deal between Republicans and the White House resulted in the elimination of $1.4 billion from the agency's original $80 billion allocation through the Inflation Reduction Act, and in a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years. divert these funds to other non-defense programs.