The Internal Revenue Service has announced the state of tax filing season for 2023.

The tax agency will begin accepting and processing returns on Monday, Jan. 23. The deadline for submitting returns is April 18.

More than 168 million individual tax returns are expected to be filed and the IRS said it has taken “additional steps” to improve services for taxpayers, including hiring more than 5,000 new telephone assistors as well as more in-person staff.

READ MORE: IRS has corrected 14 million tax returns: Who received the average $1,232 refund?

“This filing season is the first to benefit the IRS and our nation’s tax system from multi-year funding in the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Acting IRS Commissioner Doug O’Donnell. ” While much work remains after several difficult years, we expect people to experience improvements this tax season. That’s just the start as we work to add new long-term transformation efforts that will make things even smoother in future years.”

Many software providers and tax professionals are already accepting tax returns; they will transmit those returns to the IRS when the agency begins accepting tax returns on Jan. 23, the agency said.

IRS Free File opens today and participating providers will accept completed returns and hold them until they can be electronically filed.

The Free File program allows taxpayers who made $73,000 or less in 2022 to file their taxes electronically for free using software provided by commercial tax filing companies. Free File Fillable forms, a part of this effort, is available to any income level and provides free electronic forms that people fill out and file themselves also at no cost.