Over the same period, IRS staff processed 46% fewer individual paper returns and 80% fewer business paper returns. According to IRS officials, fewer paper returns were processed because they were delayed for two main reasons:Unavailable systems: To process paper returns, the IRS uses two systems to either manually transcribe or digitally scan returns to convert the information into an electronically readable format. However, IRS officials told the GAO that it took longer to process business returns with this system compared to the scanning system. With the IRS's capacity to process business returns limited for the entire 2026 filing season, IRS officials said they asked vendors to prioritize scanning business returns. The IRS sent about 3.7 million business paper returns to outside vendors for scanning during the 2026 filing season — a 725% increase from the 443,000 business paper returns that the IRS sent last year.