LO
PilotCognitive automation2026-02-06
IRS pilots digitised only about 7 percent of 53.3 million paper returns, and contractors had scanned 5 percent in the 2025 filing season, the Treasury's tax inspector general reported
Data entry clerkoccupation page →
Event date / reported
2026-02-06
Evidence stage
PilotSmall-scale trial in a real setting. Tells us the deployment conditions are being tested, not that they hold — so one pilot is never enough on its own; two independent ones are.
Tasks this bears on
Keying data from documents
Typing data from paper forms, scans and statements into systems.
Automating✓ Evidence-backed
Opening mail and preparing documents
Opening, sorting and preparing paper for scanning or keying.
Automating≈ Platform inference
Where this applies
United States, the IRS. The audit says pilots in which contractors scanned paper returns and extracted the data proved that paper returns can be digitised, but only about 3.8 million (7 percent) of 53.3 million paper-filed Forms 940, 941 and 1040 received from February 2023 through December 2024 were processed this way; as of May 2025 contractors had scanned nearly 517,000 (5 percent) of 9.8 million received in the 2025 filing season. In September 2025 the IRS awarded digitisation contracts totalling $2.3 billion through fiscal year 2030, and contractors must recruit staff to receive and open mail and review return data for accuracy. Work moving to contractors is not the same as work being automated.
What this means
Reading paper returns by machine works, but at the largest paper-processing agency in the US it has so far reached only a small share of the volume, and it still needs people to open mail and check data.
What it does not yet show
One agency's audit; it does not measure keying jobs, and the new contracts may change the pace.
What you can check
Open TIGTA report 2026-408-003 and find "3.8 million (7 percent)".
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. Of the 2 linked judgements above, 1 moved from inference to evidence with this record; the other 0 already rested on earlier evidence.
Source
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — The IRS Has Made Limited Progress Achieving Paperless Processing, Report Number 2026-408-003 (February 6, 2026) · verified 2026-09-30 · Claude (VOLO agent) · interpreted 2026-09-30 · Claude (VOLO agent)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.