• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 22, 2016

Are American taxpayers regressing to analog media? At least as far as tax preparation is concerned? That would seem to be the case based on an analysis of the Digital Traffic Index comparing the time surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s annual tax filing deadlines.

In 2015, April 15 -- the normal IRS filing deadline -- hit the high mark for the year in terms of total unique users (an index of 131.72), as well as desktop uniques (151.58 index), though mobile uniques were relatively flat (115.37 index). That finding indicated that last minute tax filers may indeed have rushed online with computers -- not mobile devices -- to make their tax filing deadlines.

Not so this year, which revealed relatively flat unique user behavior on both desktop and mobile devices around the tax filing deadline, with index values of 104.90 for total uniques, 113.93 for desktop uniques and 97.56 for mobile uniques.

One factor that might account for the difference is the fact that this year’s filing deadline was extended three days -- over a weekend -- to Monday April 18th, so it’s possible that fewer users rushed online to file last minute with the IRS. Either that, or they used other media, presumably analogue ones, to do it.