The News Reports were WRONG

The IRS recently published raw filing statistics comparing 2017 to 2016 as of the week ending March 3, 2017. Despite their caveat that “Calendar year-to-year comparisons are difficult at this early point in the season,...” major news services have continued to report that the 2017 statistics are significantly down from those of 2016.

Are they? Let’s look deeper. The 2016 period reflected in the IRS statistics is reportedly from January 19 to March 4. The 2017 period reflected in the IRS statistics is reportedly from January 23 to March 3. While the IRS report notes that “four additional days of tax return processing are included in the 2016 totals,” there is actually a difference of six reporting days, since 2016 included a leap year day in February and the the 2017 period reported ends one day earlier that the 2016 period reported.

This disparity in total days reported can seem small, but it can actually make a significant difference when comparing activity for the two partial tax seasons.

One way to improve the comparability of data in this case is to reduce the numbers to averages per day. When we do that, the results look quite a bit different:

As you can see, once 2017 is compared with 2016 on an average per day basis, there has actually been an increase, not a decrease, in activity so far during the filing period.

So what happened? The IRS reported raw data. The media in its haste to get the story out, neglected to look further -- but in the final analysis, it is OUR responsibility as consumers of the information to look deeper.

Admittedly, the IRS did add a “% Change” column which could have caused some to misinterpret the data, but we readers need to be discerning and willing to look deeper to understand the information that is put before us. Only then will we be able to fully comprehend the informational world around us.