 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news IRS issues 2021 filing season frequently asked questions formation to help taxpayers preparing their 2021 returns. But first an attempt at a joke I apologize in advance. The government has finally let the cat out of the bag regarding inflation resulting in a dead cat bounce literally poor cat. That cat clearly was not killed by curiosity. The government forced the poor feline into a sack forbidding it to communicate with anyone for years. I suspect the government has a lot more cats in bags most of which are long dead. It would be nice if they let more of the famished felines free resulting in a government that is more open honest and transparent. You know the way the government of a democratic republic is supposed to be. I are 2022-21 January 31st 2022 Washington. These frequently asked questions FAQs are released to the public in fact sheet 2022-06. There's a link to that here January 31st 2022. The American Rescue Plan the ARPA of 2021 expanded the child tax credit the CTC for tax year 2021 only of these child tax credit frequently asked questions FAQs focus on information helpful to taxpayers preparing their tax year 2021 tax returns recipients of advanced child tax credit payments there's a link to that here will need to compare the amount of payments received during 2021 with the amount of the child tax credit that can be claimed on their 2021 tax return. So they're expecting a little bit of a complication I would assume with the child tax credit because this is the first time or they've changed the law with regards to how to calculate the credit so it's a little bit different and they of course sent out those prepayments which means to do the tax return you got to do the calculation under the new format more of it being refundable so you got to take that into consideration and you've got to know how much you got in form of the prepayment and correctly apply that out if everything went smoothly you should have got a plan to give in other words half of the credit in the form of a prepayment so you would think that you would still have half that you would be receiving at the point of time you file the return typically by April 18th of 2022. So those that received less than the amount they are eligible for can claim a credit for the remaining amount those that received more than they are eligible for may need to repay some or all of the excess amount. So generally you would think that if everything went smoothly if they got the estimate correctly if they knew the correct amounts of the dependence which they relied on the prior year tax returns in order to do in general which is an estimate then you should have gotten basically half of the payments in the form of prepayments and you'd still get half of the credit which is larger than it was last year because in other words the full credit was increased and then they took half of it and gave it out in the form of a prepayment but there could be a situation where for example you had someone on your prior year tax return which they based the prepayment on that is not going to be on the current tax return for 2021 possibly due to like a joint custody type of situation which is fairly common which means that you could end up actually owing the money back in essence or lowering the refund that you would get because you would have gotten a prepayment based on a dependent that isn't actually a dependent in the tax year of 2021. So the IRS has sent letter 6419 in January 2022 to provide the total amount of advanced child tax credit payments that were received in 2021 the IRS urges taxpayers receiving these letters to make sure they hold on to them to assist them in preparing their 2021 federal tax returns in 2022. These FAQs frequently asked questions contain the following topics. Topic A 2021 child tax credit basics. Topic B eligibility rules for claiming 2021 child tax credit on a 2021 tax return. Topic C reconciling advanced child tax credit payments and claiming the 2021 child tax credit on the 2021 tax return. Honestly this child tax credit and the advance payment seems like it like double the size of the tax code like in and of its net and that's that's a bit of an exaggeration. But in the case. Topic D claiming the 2021 child tax credit if you don't normally file a tax return. Topic E commonly asked immigration related questions. More information about reliance is available there's a link to that here IRS FAQs frequently asked questions. There's links to all that stuff here. There'll be a link to this in the description.