The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has announced that taxpayers will have the convenience of electronically submitting all their tax documents for the 2024 tax season, and it hopes to go completely paperless by 2025.
The initiative, which was announced Wednesday, is an effort by the IRS to "eliminate up to 200 million pieces of paper" they receive annually.
"The IRS receives about 76 million paper tax returns and forms, and 125 million pieces of correspondence, notice responses, and non-tax forms each year, and its limited capability to accept these forms digitally or digitize paper it receives has prevented the IRS from delivering the world-class service taxpayers deserve," the U.S. Department of The Treasurysaid in a statement.
The initiative's goal is to go paperless by converting all paper tax returns to digital documents by the 2025 tax season and reducing the agency's $40 million annual expense on storing over 1 billion historical documents, as stated by the Treasury. It's a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocates $80 billion to the IRS over ten years to enhance technology and tax processing.
The majority of U.S. tax returns are already filed electronically because, for most, it leads to quicker refunds, and the IRS says there is more security and fewer errors when filing electronically.
According to data provided by the IRS, "nearly 213.4 million returns and other forms" were filed electronically last year, which represented 81.2% of all the filings.
The agency clarifies that taxpayers can still submit paper returns and correspondence for 2024 and 2025.
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