2003 overview

Statistics of Income Bulletin, Winter, 2003

In our overview of Year 2003, the SOI Statistical Information Services Office received nearly 2,700 direct requests for information in the 12-month period ending December 31, 2003. About 1,311 requests (or 49.1 percent of the total) were by e-mails or faxes. Some 47.7 percent of the requests were by telephone, and about 3.1 percent of the requests were from letters or face-to-face meetings with "walk-in" visitors.

Who were the requesters we responded to in 2003? About 22.1 percent were from consultants, 16.9 percent from private citizens, and 10.0 percent from other IRS offices. After these categories, the next most frequent requesters were: universities (9.2 percent); corporations (9.1 percent); students (6.3 percent), State and local governments (5.9 percent); media (4.9 percent); and Federal agencies (3.7 percent). The remaining requests carne from nonprofit organizations; associations, law firms; accounting firms; Congress; banks; foreigners; and public libraries, which together accounted for 12.8 percent of the total.

While overall, the level of direct requests has stayed fairly constant in the past few years, Internet downloads appear to have declined slightly this past year. The grand total of Year 2003 downloads from "Tax Stats" (www.irs.gov/taxstats) was 1,840,910. This averaged 153,409 downloads per month, down from about 210,219 downloads per month in 2002. (The apparent decline in the counts for 2003 is due in large part to a change in the method of counting downloads, and, therefore, the counts may be severely understated.) Over 61.1 percent of all downloads from Tax Stats are accounted for by two items--data on individuals and the IRS Data Book. About 752,693 downloads (or 40.9 percent of the grand total) were for individual income tax return data and 372,404 downloads (or 20.2 percent of the total) were for the IRS Data Book. As always, all data provided are free from any identifying information, since we are prohibited by law from releasing names of data for specific taxpayers.

For your information, the most recent list of SOI specialists, along with a description of SOI projects, appears in the back of each issue of the SOI Bulletin in the Projects and Contacts section. We are pleased to be able to provide information services to our customers. By all means, call or write us, or visit the at our Web site address (http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/ index.html. Sometimes, we receive requests for IRS data other than SOI's. If we have the data or know who has, we will make every effort to help the requester.