Sponsors (2)
The bill speeds and automates processing of printed, electronically prepared tax returns—improving efficiency and reducing some errors—while shifting costs and compliance burdens onto paper filers and risking OCR-related misprocessing for low-quality submissions.
Taxpayers: printed returns that were prepared electronically will be digitized and processed faster, reducing wait times for refunds and lowering the chance of processing delays.
IRS staff and federal employees: less manual data-entry and scanning work, which should reduce transcription errors and free staff time for other tasks.
Taxpayers: clearer formatting standards for printed, electronically prepared returns will improve compatibility with IRS systems and reduce rejections and resubmissions.
Taxpayers who continue to file on paper: will face extra burden to conform printed electronically-prepared returns to new formatting standards, which could be costly or confusing for some filers.
Taxpayers: poor-quality prints or handwritten entries can trigger OCR errors, resulting in misprocessed returns or delays while issues are corrected.
Taxpayers/government: implementation and technology upgrades will increase IRS spending, creating potential budgetary pressure or indirect costs to taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the IRS to scan and OCR paper tax returns and paper correspondence and requires printed electronic returns to be formatted for IRS scanning, with phased-in start dates.
Introduced January 7, 2026 by Brad Schneider · Last progress April 28, 2026
Requires the IRS to scan and digitize paper federal tax returns and paper correspondence using scanning technology and optical character recognition (OCR). Electronically prepared returns printed and filed on paper must be formatted for IRS scanning; OCR is required for paper returns not prepared electronically and for paper correspondence, with a Treasury Secretary exemption allowed only after a report to key tax committees. The law phases in effectiveness: individual income returns start after a short delay, most returns and correspondence after longer phased-in dates.