Haven’t Received Your Tax Refund Yet?

By Mariko Hayashi-Hall Tax 0 Comments

Article Highlights

If you haven’t received your tax refund yet, you are not alone. We have been hearing from clients who are still waiting on refunds from returns filed early in the year. Unless there is an error in normal times, the IRS will issue most refunds in less than 21 calendar days. However, 2021 is far from a typical year for several reasons.

COVID-19

Unlike most other employers that had to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, IRS employees could not work from home because they can only access the IRS computer system from IRS facilities. Thus, during 2020 and 2021, many IRS employees were furloughed. As a result, the IRS got significantly behind in processing returns, especially paper-filed returns that must be input manually. As a result, the IRS was still processing 2019 returns at the beginning of the 2020 return filing season.

Economic Impact Payments

Congress ordered the IRS to handle issuing three economic impact payments, two in 2020 and one in 2021, tapping IRS resources.

Recovery Rebates

Those first two economic impact payments had to be reconciled on the 2020 tax return to make matters worse. If a taxpayer didn’t receive the amount they were entitled to, they were allowed an equivalent recovery rebate credit on their tax return.

Suppose there is a discrepancy between the amount of the payments reported on the tax return and what the IRS has on file for the economic impact payment amounts. In that case, the IRS manually verifies the tax return for credit eligibility, further delaying refunds.

Unemployment Debacle

In March 2021, Congress, after the 2020 tax filing season had gotten underway and millions of taxpayers had already filed their returns, decided to make a portion of the unemployment compensation taxpayers received in 2020 tax-free. To avoid millions of amended returns from being filed, the IRS has undertaken the task of automatically adjusting those returns and issuing refunds.

Using 2019 Income to Compute 2020 EITC & Additional Child Tax Credit

The EITC and the additional child tax credit are based on a taxpayer’s earned income (income from working). However, because most of those who typically benefited from EITC and the additional child tax credit were unemployed during 2020, Congress allowed the use of 2019 earned income to compute those credits for 2020, causing processing delays.

Other Issues

Issues that cause delays in disbursing refunds include:

returns filed with missing information
Those affected by identity theft and fraud
Those filed with an injured spouse allocation on IRS Form 8379 (which can take a minimum of 14 weeks to process)
Returns that warrant further review

You can use the IRS’s online tool “Where’s My Refund” to determine the status of your refund. To use that tool, you will need:

Social security number or ITIN
Your filing status
Your exact refund amount

Generally, the IRS will pay interest on the refund due you starting from the later of the date:

The return was filed.
The return is received by IRS if it was filed after the due date.
The IRS received the return in a format they can process.
The IRS stops paying interest on overpayments on the date they issue the refund, or it is used to offset an outstanding liability.

Currently, the interest rate the IRS pays individuals on overpayments is 3%; the rate is adjusted quarterly but has been at 3% since July 1, 2020.

Exception: No overpayment interest is paid if the IRS issues the refund within 45 days of the return due date or the actual filing date if later.

As you can see, refunds are not issued as quickly as they were in years before COVID. There is not anything a tax preparer or taxpayer can do about the IRS not paying out refunds once a return is electronically filed and accepted by the IRS.

Haven’t Received Your Tax Refund Yet?