IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel testifies during the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the IRS budget for fiscal year 2024 and the IRS filing season for 2023, in the Dirksen Building in Washington, DC, April 19, 2023.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
This season, more than 140,000 taxpayers successfully filed their returns using IRS Direct File, a free IRS tax filing pilot, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS.
The program was fully opened to certain taxpayers in 12 states in early March and saved filers about $5.6 million in federal tax preparation fees, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said , to journalists during a press call.
Direct File surveyed more than 15,000 users, with about 90% rating their experience as “excellent,” the agencies reported.
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“We have not made a decision regarding the future of Direct File,” Werfel said, noting that the agency still needs to analyze data and get feedback from a “wide variety of stakeholders.”
The IRS plans to release a more detailed report on the Direct File pilot “in the coming days,” he added.
How Direct File could be extended
The Direct File pilot included Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.
The pilot only accepted Form W-2 wages, Social Security retirement income, unemployment benefits and interest of $1,500 or less. This excluded filers whose contract income was reported via Form 1099-NEC, gig economy workers, and self-employed filers.
Filers were required to claim the standard deduction, which amounted to $13,850 for single filers and $27,700 for married couples filing jointly for 2023.
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