• by Michael Shields , April 13, 2004

When it comes to income tax season, Americans appear to fall into one of two distinct groups: the organized and the procrastinators. Perhaps driven by the ease and speed of online tax filing, the group of procrastinators may be shrinking, according to Claria Corp.'s research on the 2003 tax season.

Based on a survey of more than 3,000 respondents drawn from 43 million users, Claria's Feedback Research division found that 77 percent of taxpayers filed their taxes either online or offline by March 25, and only 6 percent of taxpayers will wait until April 15 or later to file their taxes.

E-filing is becoming closer to the norm, as 43 percent of the population is expected to file electronically--up 12 percentage points from 2002, according to Claria.

The pattern of early filing followed by a lull is more pronounced online. Tax-related sites experienced major spikes in early February, only to see traffic decline steadily through early April, when procrastinators seemed to make a last-minute scramble.

The Web site of the Internal Revenue Service saw a big jump in traffic during the week ending February 8 to 3.7 million unique users--up from less than a million users in late January, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Similarly, the sites for H&R Block (1.5 million users) and Turbo Tax (1.8 million users) made hefty gains in unique users during that week.

"The post office will likely still be busy on April 15, but with many tax sites offering incentives to file early, more people have [a] reason not to procrastinate with their taxes," said Kaizad Gotla, Nielsen//NetRatings Internet analyst. "Traffic patterns indicate two camps--those who file as soon as they receive their W-2 forms and those who wait until the last minute."

"I think what is happening is that people are seeing [tax filing] as not as much of a chore [when filing online]" said Claria representative Mandy Mladenoff.