North Dakota’s Tax Commissioner says so far, state income tax filings are a little ahead of last year.
Ryan Rauschenberger said to date, around 66,000 returns have been filed, compared with 57,000 last year at this time. Rauschenberger said 98 percent of those have been e-filed. And he said the refunds are running about the same as last year – averaging about $174 per return.
Rauschenberger said his department is continuing its focus on fraud protection.
"We're continuing to purposefully slow down, but only by a day or so, refunds going out the door," Rauschenberger said. "We want to make sure they aren't being claimed by a fraudulent filer. We want to make sure we aren't sending checks to fraudsters."
Rauschenberger said those efforts have paid off.
"Over the last 5 years, we've stopped about 1500 cases, totaling about $2 million in fraudulent refunds from going out the door," Rauschenberger said.
Rauschenberger said he also expects a little bit of an uptick in the overall number of filers this year.
"I would say, this year, around 480,000 to 485,000 returns," Rauschenberger said. "Last year, we had around 478,000."
And Rauschenberger said as the deadline approaches, and the returns get more complicated, he does expect the e-filing numbers to drop a bit.
