Getting taxes in
21 million people visit the IRS website in the week before taxes are due
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The federal government keeps a live ticker of how many people are on government websites and which pages are getting the most traffic. In 2015, over the week before Tax Day, the IRS site had 21 million hits — way ahead of even the perennially popular Weather.gov. The most popular page on the IRS site? "Where's My Refund?"
Image credit: analytics.usa.gov
But the peak of tax preparation season is in February
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks employment in the "tax preparation" industry (think H&R Block). Surprisingly, it found that employment actually peaks a couple of months before Tax Day — in February — and then falls in March and April. Apparently, the people who hire tax preparers are super-organized types who want to file as early as possible to get their refunds. (The worst time to go into the tax prep industry, apparently, is July.)
Image credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics
America's tax collection is pretty cost-efficient compared with other countries'
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This chart, made by Quartz, shows how much countries spend collecting taxes versus how much they take in. The IRS does pretty well in international comparison — the money the US spends to collect your taxes is about 62 cents on every $100 it has left over afterward. Some countries are much less efficient — Poland and the Czech Republic, for example, spend $2 collecting taxes for each $100 they have left over.
Image credit: Tim Fernholz/Quartz
The taxes you've already paid