The IRS is launching a major effort to digitize all paper-filed tax returns by 2025, which is expected to cut processing times in half and speed up refunds by four weeks, the agency said Wednesday. Also, taxpayers will be able to submit more correspondence online during the coming filing period. The two-pronged effort, dubbed the “Paperless Processing Initiative,” aims to cut down on the millions of paper documents the IRS receives annually.
By the 2025 filing season, the IRS expects to digitally process all paper-filed tax returns, affecting up to 76 million returns and forms. This will help improve IRS service by eliminating errors resulting from manually inputting data from paper returns, speeding up processing and getting refunds to taxpayers four weeks sooner.