Tax preparation spans far more than the annual individual income-tax return. IRS data shows a large and increasingly electronic filing system that includes sole proprietors, partnerships, S corporations, corporations, employment-tax returns, estimated-tax payments, and supporting forms. The statistics below identify the measurement period for each figure so small-business owners can distinguish current administrative volume from older business-activity data and forecasts.
Contents
- IRS filing volume and business workload
- Electronic filing and paid preparation
- Sole proprietor and Schedule C preparation
- Industry signals in Schedule C data
- Partnership and pass-through preparation
- Support, accuracy, and examinations
IRS filing volume and business workload
The Internal Revenue Service processed 271,442,355 federal tax returns and other forms in fiscal year (FY) 2025, compared with 266,619,971 in FY 2024. That was a 1.8% increase. The total includes many documents that do not look like a conventional annual tax return but still contribute to the preparation and compliance workload. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
Income-tax filings totaled 193,733,779 in FY 2025. This IRS-wide category included individual, corporation, partnership, and estate-and-trust returns. Individual returns totaled 162,754,810, including 161,465,322 Forms 1040 and 1040-SR. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
Business return categories also grew between FY 2024 and FY 2025. C or other corporation income-tax returns reached 2,350,205, up 4.4% from 2,252,027. S corporation Form 1120-S filings totaled 6,154,614, up 1.2% from 6,080,370. Partnership Form 1065 filings totaled 5,215,815, up 2.3% from 5,100,408. These are processed filing counts for the fiscal-year period, not a count of unique businesses. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
Other filing obligations add to preparation demand. Individual estimated-tax Form 1040-ES filings rose to 13,315,355 in FY 2025 from 12,076,801 in FY 2024, a 10.3% increase. Employment-tax returns increased 1.4%, from 33,662,190 to 34,143,809. Supplemental documents filed with the IRS totaled 40,253,171 in FY 2025, up 2.4% from 39,316,832. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
IRS business income-tax gross collections were $486.384 billion in FY 2025, including $484.214 billion from corporation income tax. Gross collections describe money received by the IRS during the fiscal year; they are not the same measure as tax-preparation fees, business profit, or a taxpayer’s final liability. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
Electronic filing and paid preparation
Electronic filing is the dominant channel in the available IRS measures. The IRS recorded 224.2 million electronically filed returns and other forms in FY 2025, equal to 82.6% of all filings. Individual electronic filing reached 93.7%. The FY 2025 Data Book reported 162.8 million individual returns in total, including 10.3 million paper returns. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
Paid preparers electronically filed 86.7 million individual returns in FY 2025. Taxpayers used IRS Free File for 3.2 million individual returns. These figures describe filing channels and preparation arrangements; they do not establish that every paid-preparer return was prepared by a certified public accountant or that every self-prepared return was completed without software or other assistance. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
A separate filing-season snapshot shows how activity looked by early April 2024. By April 5, 2024, the IRS had received 98,421,000 electronically filed individual returns, compared with 97,831,000 by April 7, 2023. Tax professionals e-filed 53,157,000 returns, versus 53,165,000 by the comparable 2023 date. Self-prepared taxpayers e-filed 45,264,000, up 1.3% from 44,666,000. (Filing season statistics for week ending April 5, 2024)
The same April 5, 2024 release reported 101,849,000 individual returns received and 100,110,000 processed. Individual refunds totaled $201.117 billion across 66,799,000 refunds, producing an average refund of $3,011. Direct-deposit refunds averaged $3,088, compared with $2,942 at the comparable 2023 filing-season date. These are cumulative filing-season measurements through April 5, not full-year totals. (Filing season statistics for week ending April 5, 2024)
| Measure | Earlier comparison | Later or current measure |
|---|---|---|
| Individual e-filed returns, filing-season snapshot | 97,831,000 by Apr. 7, 2023 | 98,421,000 by Apr. 5, 2024 |
| Self-prepared e-filed returns | 44,666,000 by Apr. 7, 2023 | 45,264,000 by Apr. 5, 2024 |
| Direct-deposit average refund | $2,942 by Apr. 7, 2023 | $3,088 by Apr. 5, 2024 |
| Electronic share of all IRS filings | Not stated for the comparison | 82.6% in FY 2025 |
Sole proprietor and Schedule C preparation
Sole proprietors often report business activity on Schedule C attached to an individual return. The IRS estimated 30,983,810 individual returns with Schedule C attached for tax year 2022. Those returns reported $3.160 trillion of total income and $3.243 trillion of business or profession income. Dollar amounts in the underlying source table are presented in thousands of dollars. (Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022)
Schedule C returns reported $543.909 billion of adjusted gross income less deficit for tax year 2022. This measure should not be read as the same thing as gross receipts: adjusted gross income less deficit is a tax-return income measure after the source’s applicable adjustments and reporting structure. The data is for tax year 2022 and should not be treated as a current-year estimate. (Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022)
The IRS counted 3,917,083 nonfarm sole proprietorships in professional, scientific, and technical services. They reported $247.754 billion in business receipts and $146.511 billion in business deductions. Construction had 3,316,895 nonfarm sole proprietorships, with $175.287 billion in business receipts and $182.003 billion in business deductions. Transportation and warehousing had 3,775,848 sole proprietorships, with $202.627 billion in business receipts and $180.269 billion in deductions. (Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022)
Health care and social assistance accounted for 2,420,090 nonfarm sole proprietorships and $142.268 billion in business receipts. The figures illustrate why tax preparation for a sole proprietor can involve more than entering a single annual revenue number: the filing population includes several large industries with distinct receipts and deduction totals. (Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022)
Industry signals in Schedule C data
The IRS’s tax-year 2022 Schedule C industry figures show substantial variation in reported business or profession income. The values below are reported amounts for the named industry categories, not forecasts and not a ranking of profitability.
| Schedule C industry | Business or profession income, tax year 2022 |
|---|---|
| Professional, scientific, and technical | $731.650 billion |
| Health care and social assistance | $290.252 billion |
| Real estate and rental and leasing | $269.315 billion |
| Retail trade | $245.143 billion |
| Other services | $234.387 billion |
| Arts, entertainment, and recreation | $233.692 billion |
| Finance and insurance | $158.689 billion |
| Transportation and warehousing | $174.155 billion |
| Construction | $175.287 billion |
| Accommodation, food services, and drinking places | $63.243 billion |
A business owner can use these figures as context for the scale of Schedule C preparation by industry, but the table does not provide margins, average receipts per filer, audit risk, or a measure of what a preparer should charge. The source reports industry totals for tax year 2022. (Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022)
Partnership and pass-through preparation
Partnership statistics provide a separate view of pass-through tax preparation. Partnerships filed more than 4.5 million returns for tax year 2023, up 1.7% from tax year 2022. Those returns represented more than 30.2 million partners, a 5.0% increase from the prior year. (SOI tax stats—Partnership statistics)
Limited liability companies made up 72.7% of partnerships in tax year 2023. Limited partnerships accounted for 9.7% of all partnerships, 32.8% of all pass-through income, and 34.2% of total partners. These percentages describe the partnership population and its reported pass-through measures; they are not percentages of all U.S. businesses. (SOI tax stats—Partnership statistics)
Partnership balance-sheet and income measures moved in different directions. Total assets increased from $52.5 trillion in 2022 to $57.3 trillion in 2023, a 9.1% rise. Partnership receipts totaled $12.0 trillion in 2023, down 4.4% from 2022. Partnership pass-through income fell 17.9%, from $2.6 trillion to $2.1 trillion. These are tax-year statistics, and the movement in one measure should not be used to infer a change in every partnership’s results. (SOI tax stats—Partnership statistics)
The IRS also projected 5.489 million partnership returns and 8.504 million corporation returns to be processed in calendar year 2026. Those numbers are forecasts from Publication 6186, not actual 2026 filings. (Publication 6186, December 2024 revision)
Support, accuracy, and examinations
Tax preparation support includes both professional and public-service channels. In FY 2025, the IRS hosted 833 outreach events for small-business and self-employed taxpayers, attracting 263,149 participants. Small-business-owner electronic newsletter subscriptions totaled 488,396, while payroll-provider subscriptions totaled 159,694. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for the Elderly programs prepared 2,915,907 federal returns in FY 2025. They used 9,130 volunteer tax-preparation assistance sites and 76,314 volunteers. Return-preparation accuracy was 95.8%. This accuracy figure applies to those programs’ measured return-preparation activity, not to all tax returns or all paid preparers. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
The IRS closed 497,621 examinations in FY 2025 and recommended $26.829 billion in additional tax. Examination closures included 7,495 corporation income-tax returns other than Form 1120-S, with $11.987 billion in recommended additional tax, and 31,268 employment-tax returns, with $898.935 million in recommended additional tax. Recommended additional tax is an examination outcome measure, not necessarily tax ultimately collected. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
FY 2025 examination closures also included 3,141 partnership returns and 4,465 S corporation returns. The IRS classifies these as nontaxable pass-through returns in the examination table. That classification does not mean the businesses had no tax-related obligations; it identifies how the returns are categorized in the IRS examination statistics. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)
For direct assistance, IRS toll-free service answered 27,540,877 Customer Service Representative calls in FY 2025, including 18,559,376 live calls. Tax-law question accuracy was 86.3%, while account-question accuracy was 85.2%. These service accuracy measures are distinct from the 95.8% VITA and TCE return-preparation accuracy rate. (Internal Revenue Service Data Book, 2025)