Technologies

IRS Has Issued Over $211 Billion in Tax Refunds, With 2025’s Filing Season Ending Today

With today’s federal income tax deadline, the IRS surpasses numbers from 2024.

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The 2025 tax season has been underway since late January, and for many tax payers, the filing season officially wraps up today (unless you’ve filed an extension or the IRS issued you more time to file due to local natural disasters). That means more than 100 million taxpayers have already filed their tax return and have already received their refund money or are patiently tracking their tax refunds.

Last Friday, the IRS said it has received over 101 million tax returns and issued more than 67 million tax refunds. Through the final week of the 2024 tax season, the average refund amount had risen by approximately 3.5% compared to 2023’s season.

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Read on for a breakdown of how the IRS has been performing up to Tax Day.

For more tax tips, check out our essential tax filing cheat sheet and how to track your refund from the IRS into your bank account. Check out our pick for the best tax software of 2025.

How many tax returns has the IRS processed so far in 2025?

On Friday, the IRS released statistics comparing its progress through the 10th week of tax season 2024 (ending April 5, 2024) with its progress through the 10th week of 2025 (ending April 4, 2025). So far this year, the IRS has processed 100.3 million federal income tax returns, up 0.2% from the 100.1 million returns it had processed by the same time last year.

The IRS has received more than 101.4 million tax returns total so far, compared with 101.8 million last year, marking a 0.4% decrease.

The agency also breaks down how returns have been filed, with 98.1 million returns received electronically (53.3 million filed by tax professionals and 44.7 million self-prepared).

How many tax refunds has the IRS issued in 2025?

The IRS has issued 67.7 million refunds, a 1.4% increase from the approximate 66.8 million sent out at this point in 2024.

The average tax refund amount so far is $3,116, up 3.5% from last year’s average of $3,011 at this time last year.

How do 2025’s tax refunds compare to 2024’s so far?

So far, the IRS has issued more than $211 billion in tax refunds, a 5% increase from the $201 billion in tax refunds it had issued by this time in 2024.

The IRS noted that large percentage differences in filing statistics are typical for the beginning of each tax season. It accurately predicted that the numbers would even out as more people gathered important tax documents and filed before today’s Tax Day deadline.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for April 20, #413

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 413 for April 20, Easter Sunday.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

If you know what holiday today is, then the new NYT Strands puzzle should be a breeze. The New York Times doesn’t always theme its puzzles to holidays, but it went all-out with this one. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: On the hunt.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Today’s holiday.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CRAB, BRAT, TONE, RACK, DENT, YEAST, EAST, CANE, CHOP, BUSY, COLA, SACK.

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you’ve got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

BOOK, EGGS, TOYS, BUNNY, CANDY, PEEPS, CHOCOLATE.

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is EASTERBASKET. To find it, start with the E that’s four letters down on the far-left row, and wind across.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 20, #679

Hints and answers for Connections for April 20, #679, Easter Sunday.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Happy Easter! Whether or not you celebrate, you probably recognized quite a few words related to the holiday in today’s Connections puzzle. But you also knew it couldn’t be quite that easy — those words all had other groupings. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Did you see that?

Green group hint: Hippie-style top.

Blue group hint: Sidewalks have them.

Purple group hint: Yes, the Easter bunny does this.