Filing season for the 2017 tax year will begin on Jan. 29, the Internal Revenue Service announced.
The date marks the time the IRS will be accepting both electronic and paper returns. Processing on electronic returns will start Jan. 29; processing on paper returns will start in mid-February.
“The IRS strongly encourages people to file their tax returns electronically for faster refunds,” the U.S. tax agency said in a statement.
Nearly 155 million individual tax returns are expected to be filed in 2018.
The tax deadline will be April 17 this year, two days later than the traditional April 15 cutoff.
In 2018, April 15 falls on a Sunday, and this would usually move the filing deadline to the following Monday – April 16. However, Emancipation Day – a legal holiday in the District of Columbia – will be observed on that Monday, which pushes the nation’s filing deadline to Tuesday, April 17. Under the tax law, legal holidays in the District of Columbia affect the filing deadline across the nation.
The IRS said it will issue nine out of 10 refunds in less than 21 days.