How many federal income tax returns are filed each year?
About 153.1 million individual income tax returns were filed for tax year 2023, up from 119.4 million for 2001. The jump to 157.5 million for 2020 came as many people with little or no income filed to claim pandemic stimulus payments they had missed; returns filed only to get a stimulus payment in 2008 aren't counted. These counts leave out returns of people claimed as someone's dependent, and are IRS estimates from a sample of returns. One return can cover a married couple filing jointly, so returns are not the same as people.
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Chartly. “How many federal income tax returns are filed each year?” Chart. Data: IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-tax-rate-and-income-percentile (data as of December 31, 2023). https://chart.ly/charts/income-tax-returns-filed (accessed September 27, 2026).
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The data
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| Tax year | Individual income tax returns |
|---|---|
| 2001 | 119,370,886 |
| 2002 | 119,850,561 |
| 2003 | 120,758,947 |
| 2004 | 122,509,974 |
| 2005 | 124,673,055 |
| 2006 | 128,441,165 |
| 2007 | 132,654,911 |
| 2008 | 132,891,770 |
| 2009 | 132,619,936 |
| 2010 | 135,033,492 |
| 2011 | 136,585,712 |
| 2012 | 136,080,353 |
| 2013 | 138,313,155 |
| 2014 | 139,562,034 |
| 2015 | 141,204,625 |
| 2016 | 140,888,785 |
| 2017 | 143,295,160 |
| 2018 | 144,317,866 |
| 2019 | 148,245,929 |
| 2020 | 157,494,242 |
| 2021 | 153,589,907 |
| 2022 | 153,801,397 |
| 2023 | 153,076,443 |
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