**GAO-11-344**                      Published: Mar 07, 2011. Publicly Released: Mar 07, 2011.                  

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## Highlights

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) goal is to receive 80 percent of all major types of tax returns electronically by 2012. Legislation passed in November 2009 supports the 80 percent goal for individual income tax returns by requiring tax return preparers who file more than 10 individual returns per year to file them electronically, or e-file. In 2009, IRS electronically processed nearly 95.5 million individual tax returns, or roughly two-thirds of all individual tax returns filed. IRS estimated that it saved $3.10 for each e-filed return that it did not have to process on paper. If the remaining paper returns had been e-filed, IRS could have saved about $148 million in processing costs for 2009 alone. In addition to reducing costs, e-filing provides higher accuracy rates, improved convenience, and faster processing and refunds for taxpayers. Furthermore, IRS officials said that having increased information available electronically could improve the effectiveness of IRS's compliance programs and bring in additional enforcement revenue. Congress asked us to review IRS's implementation of the e-file mandate. In response to this request, this report assesses IRS's initial implementation of the mandate. It also provides our assessment of (1) the expected effect of the mandate on electronic filing rates and (2) early mandate implementation issues that could affect IRS's administrative costs, preparer burden, or rates of electronic filing. We plan to issue a related report this summer that provides additional information on IRS's implementation efforts and its use of electronic data.

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## Topics

Tax Policy and Administration

Cost effectiveness analysisE-governmentIncome taxesInternal controlsPersonal income taxesProgram evaluationStrategic planningTax information confidentialityTax returnsTaxpayersElectronic formsAdministrative costsElectronic data processingProductivity in governmentPolicies and procedures