The number of Canadians using netfile or efile to send Ottawa their income tax returns grew by more than five per cent, as the use of paper forms waned.

On Thursday, the Canada Revenue Agency said that as of June 12 more than 23.6 million tax returns have been filed, with the average refund being $1,254.26.

2007 tax filing statistics
	2007	2006	Change
Total received	23,606,102	23,541,197	+0.28%
Paper	10,704,861	11,182,330	-4.27%
Netfile	3,998,742	3,781,706	+5.74%
Efile	8,392,061	7,991,399	+5.01%
Telefile	510,438	585,762	-12.86%
source: Canada Revenue Agency

Although filing by paper copy is still the single most popular way to file taxes, the CRA said the number of people who filed paper copies fell by more than four cent from 2006.

Telefile, the telephone tax filing method, also dipped in usage.

After using one of the commercial tax preparation software packages or Web applications certified for netfile, Canadian consumers can use netfile to ship their own tax returns to the Canada Revenue Agency; professional tax preparers use efile.

The growth in electronic filing came despite a software glitch that prevented Canadians from filing tax returns by computer for 10 days in March.