Every year, the IRS updates Publication 6149 with multi-year, State-level forecasts of the number of tax returns expected to be filed with the IRS by form type and by filing medium (paper versus electronic). This chart displays information exclusively for employment forms 941 and 940.
12 million employment forms 941 and 940 will be paper filed in 2024 representing 35% of the total employment returns expected to be filed during the year. California, Texas, New York and Florida make up 30.4% of the total projected paper filed returns. The IRS will process about 2.4 million paper employment forms each of the first three quarters of the year and another 4.8 million paper returns on the fourth quarter of the year 😲.
Paper returns get lost in the mail, 21% of these will have errors and each will take an average 24 days to process. E-filed returns have an error rate of 0.5% and are processed in almost real time.