The Shadow
WASHINGTON, D.C. (VR) — The Internal Revenue Service today announced that the nation’s 2025 tax season will start on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, and will feature expanded and enhanced tools to help taxpayers as a result of the agency’s historic modernization efforts.
The IRS expects more than 140 million individual tax returns for tax year 2024 to be filed ahead of the Tuesday, April 15 federal deadline. More than half of all tax returns are expected to be filed this year with the help of a tax professional, and the IRS urges people to use a trusted tax pro to avoid potential scams and schemes.
The 2025 tax filing season will reflect continued IRS progress to modernize and add new tools and features to help taxpayers. Since last tax season, the improvements include more access to tax account information from text and voice virtual assistants, expanded features on the IRS Individual Online Account, more access to dozens of tax forms through cell phones and tablets and expanded alerts for scams and schemes that threaten taxpayers.
The IRS has also expanded features and availability of last year’s Direct File program. This year, Direct File will be available starting Jan. 27 to taxpayers in 25 states. In addition, the IRS Free File program opens today. Available only on IRS.gov, IRS Free File Guided Tax Software provides millions of taxpayers nationwide access to free software tools offered by trusted IRS Free File partners.
The IRS is also working to continue the success of the 2023 and 2024 tax filing seasons made possible with additional resources. The past two filing seasons saw levels of service at roughly 85% and wait times averaging less than 5 minutes on the main phone lines, as well as significant increases in the number of taxpayers served at Taxpayer Assistance Centers across the country. Based on the IRS’ current plan and funding levels, the agency will work to provide similar levels of performance on these key service metrics in the upcoming filing season.
“This has been a historic period of improvement for the IRS, and people will see additional tools and features to help them with filing their taxes this tax season,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “These taxpayer-focused improvements we’ve done so far are important, but they are just the beginning of what the IRS needs to do. More can be done with continued investment in the nation’s tax system.”
The Get Ready page on IRS.gov highlights steps taxpayers can take now to streamline the filing process and the many resources available to interact with the IRS before, during and after filing their federal tax return.
