US Tax Filings are down 5% as of April 15, 2017

In the past, many illegal immigrants filed taxes to get refunds. This year, many tax preparers are reporting a large decrease in illegal immigrants using their services, because of fear that the information would be shared with the federal government.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;17&#x2F;523634144&#x2F;tax-filings-seen-dipping-amid-trump-crackdown-on-illegal-immigration" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;17&#x2F;523634144&#x2F;tax-filings-seen-dip...</a>

Could the 5% drop be accounted for considering the numbers are for April 14th 2017 and not after the filing deadline of April 18th 2017? Seems like many people would file and&#x2F;or postmark their returns Monday or Tuesday.

I have to wonder how politically motivated this might be.<p>I met an older couple a while ago who refused to file taxes to protest the war. Wasn&#x27;t illegal mind you. They simply made sure that they didn&#x27;t earn more than cut-off ($9k I believe). They just travelled around in an RV, played folk songs, and made their living off the kindness of strangers and random odd jobs.

Year on year chart: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.axibase.com&#x2F;chartlab&#x2F;626f6fb9&#x2F;3&#x2F;#fullscreen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.axibase.com&#x2F;chartlab&#x2F;626f6fb9&#x2F;3&#x2F;#fullscreen</a>

The job reports numbers looked really good for 2016 but there were always questions about the &quot;missing workforce.&quot;<p>A possibility I haven&#x27;t seen raised yet in this thread is that more people are below the threshold to file, although 5% seems strikingly high.

Are there any statistics on how many people file a Form 4868, the 6-month extension of time to file? Since 2006, no reason is needed and it&#x27;s granted automatically, but this wasn&#x27;t initially well known, so I&#x27;d expect usage of it to be slowly increasing as word gets around. But I haven&#x27;t found any published numbers.

A bit off topic, but I&#x27;m going to rant here anyway.<p>I filed using the Free Fillable Forms. They got rejected with an XML validation error. OK, I&#x27;m a programmer, I can (and did) figure it out from that. But most people aren&#x27;t. Imagine that your grandmother is filing her taxes, and gets an XML validation error. What is an XML validation error going to mean to her?<p>Now, they&#x27;ve got a handy Web tool that you can paste the error message in, and it will tell you what&#x27;s wrong. But why should you have to? When they email you that your submission failed, why don&#x27;t <i>they</i> run the error message through that tool, and mail you the results?

It could be because the deadline was the 18th this year.

Out of the people returning, do we know how many fall under the income requirements? Is it possible to ascertain those who aren&#x27;t paying taxes out of protest?

So the national debt is about 70x the annual tax revenue?

Hm, I wonder if that implies that more people waited closer to the final deadline this year?

They will be down 25% next year I imagine ...

This makes sense because the last day last year to file on time was the 14th or 15th whereas this year it was 17th.<p>Returns will probably be higher this year once you account for that last weekend + Monday.