 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news. Tax time guide. Use the where's my refund tool or IRS to go app to conveniently check tax refund status, but first, an attempt at a joke, I apologize in advance. In response to rumors of Nancy Pelosi being a witch due to her comments regarding a potential truck convoy possibly planning on going to Washington, she responded that all Washington bound convoy related trucks and truckers will be towed. Angry environmentalists reacted worried about the dangers of entering a new species of toad into the Washington ecosystem, insisting that Pelosi turned the truckers and their trucks into great basin spadefoot toads, toads native to the area. Or boring that the most common species found in Washington that of Rana politicus, so often found in the halls of Congress, the same species of toad most United States unions have been turned into at this point. However, that species is quite poisonous. Just shaking the webbed hand of Rana politicus toad could result in a three week acid trip. And we're not talking about a good trip either, like when you might get from a good psychedelic toad. We're talking about a deep dark trip man, like wandering through Dante's Inferno stuff. COVID is the least of the dangers in that swamp. And as we know, and have known for far more than a year, at least those following the science and not the swamp appointed official lab coat wearing front men who claim to actually be science and absurd claim. Instead of reporting the scientifically found empirical data, cloth masks won't even protect you from COVID. The least of the problems in the swamp. IR2022-43 February 24, 2022 Washington, the Internal Revenue Service of Reminds taxpayers today that the fastest and easiest way to check on tax refunds is by using the where's my refund tool. There's a link to that tool here. It's on irs.gov, irs.gov, the iris website, or through the irs to go mobile app, which is the super cool way to get there. You've got the app. Everybody will be happy with you and impressed. If you have the irs to go app this year, more than ever before, those who don't normally have to file a tax return may wish to do so to get the child related tax credits that were expanded by the American rescue plan. This includes the child tax credit and the child and dependent care credit. There's links to those items here if you want more information on them. Refund updates filing electronically and using direct deposit is the safest and fastest way to file an accurate return and receive a tax refund. So they're trying to get everything as automated as possible in part because they're kind of short on staff. So they want to basically be able to automate everything and it is typically a faster way to do it. So if you're expecting a refund and you want to get that refund fast, you probably want to use tax software. You might want to make sure that you fill out the tax return as accurately as possible in accordance with the documentation. W2s and the 1099s and so on. And then you want to have the electronic or deposit automatically going into your system electronically with the direct deposit. If any of those things don't go quite right, then if it takes a person to actually review the tax return, it could go on the back of the IRS's ever increasing inventory stack as they call it. And there could be a substantial delay. If you owe taxes, I don't know, maybe the easiest thing to do is to say as long as they don't penalize you, I'll write you a check, fill you out a paper tax return as long as I don't get hit with the sticks of penalties and interest and send it in if that goes into the end of the pile for you guys over there. Maybe I'm not as concerned, but even then, even if you're expecting to owe money, it's kind of nice that you could see them, that they received the check and you can feel at least secure that it didn't get lost and they're not going to hit you with the stick of penalties and interest because they lost the check or something like that. In any case, taxpayers can use Where's My Refund to start checking their refund status within 24 hours after an EFI return is received or four weeks after the taxpayer mails a paper return. The tools tracker displays progress through three phases. Phase one return received to refund approved and three refund sent refund timing. Most tax refunds are issued within 21 days. However, some may take longer. There are several reasons this can happen. So they got the average refund. Remember that the average refund is an average. 21 days sounds like an average, right? So that means there could be outlaws just in general. And if it gets backed up for some reason and then it goes into the end of the stack, it's going to cause more problems. So you're going to try to avoid that if you're looking and depending on the refund. How can you do so? These are some things that could delay it. The return includes a claim for the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. You can't really avoid that one because those are the big credits that are actually advertising here. But the fact that the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit are refundable credits means they're more and more susceptible to people making misclaims. They're also kind of complicated to calculate actually. And they are susceptible to fraudsters that are trying to, they've increased greatly the desirability for information to file fraudulent tax returns to try to get access to these kind of refundable credits. So they need to delay the tax returns a little bit to try to reduce the level of fraudsters that are going to try to take advantage of that and steal people's information in order to get those credits and whatnot. So that is just, there's nothing you could do about that because you're going to want those credits of course, but that could take a little longer. The time between the IRS issuing the refund and the bank posting it to the account may vary since many banks do not process payments on weekends or holidays. So, you know, you could have a slight delay from the bank transfer even if it's electronic, but that should be pretty small. The return may require additional review. That's going to be the big one if the return requires additional review, especially if there's something that doesn't quite line up. And last year we know that there's stuff that didn't line up for some of the new changes including the economic impact payments that's tied out to the recovery rebate credit. This time we have that same issue with the third round as well as the advanced child tax credits and the changes there. So there are probably going to be errors with regards to those big changes and those prepayment kind of things. You want to avoid any kind of mathematical errors or calculation errors there because if it requires a review, then that's when it could be a significant, I would think, delay. The return may include errors or be incomplete. The return could be affected by identity theft or fraud. So obviously to avoid errors, you might want to try to use software instead of doing it by hand. And if there's fraud that takes place, we know there's an increased fraud component these days due to the fact that there's more money flowing out through the tax returns and these refundable credits. So if you're subject to fraud, if someone steals your identity for example and tries to file a fraudulent return, return will then that's going to cause a significant problem as well that you'll have to work through. The IRS will contact taxpayers by mail if more information is needed to process a return. Earned income tax credit and the additional child tax credit due to changes to the tax law made by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, the PATH Act. There's a link to that here. The IRS can't issue earned income credit EITC or additional child tax credit, the ACTC refunds before mid-February. So what they're trying to do with those credits, those are those big refundable credits. That's why you might have a delay if you're claiming those credits because they need a little bit more time at least to try to tamp down some of the problems with those credits including a substantial amount of fraud that a fraudulent claim is trying to get access to them. These include the entire refund, not just part that's related to the credit claimed on the tax return. So you might say, well, can't you give me the rest of the refund that's not related to those two things? And they're saying, no, we're going to delay the whole return and not give like a partial refund. You can imagine that would take a lot more time and processing to do to try to give half the refund or something like that. So where's my refund and the IRS to go? Thanks to that here are updated for most early EITC slash ACTC filers with an estimated deposit date by February 19th if they file their taxes early. If they file or claim the EITC or the ACTC, they can expect to get their refund March 1st if they file the returns online, they choose to get their refund by direct deposit and no issues were found with their return, ignoring refund myths. Some taxpayers mistakenly believe they can expedite their refunds by ordering a tax transcript calling the IRS or calling the tax preparer. So you might think, hey, you know, something's happening here. I'm going to call someone. I'm going to call someone. I'm going to do something. I'm going to call my tax preparer. I'm going to order a transcript. I'm not sure where that one came in. I'm not sure why ordering a transcript would have been thought to increase. But I can see why people say, I'm going to call the IRS. I'm going to call them. Well, if you try to call the IRS, their phone service is pretty backed up. So you're probably not going to get a hold of anyone. And even when you get a hold of someone, they're going to most likely say it's being processed. They're going to look it up in their computer and it's going to say exactly what yours says when you go in the IRS. Where's my refund thing? Like whatever it says there, that's probably what they're looking up on their side. So trying to get access to them is probably going to just cause you headache and not get you anywhere. The tax preparer has little to no ability to do anything on their end as well in terms of the processing time on the IRS side. All they have control over is getting their tax return processed. So you want to check with your tax preparer to make sure that it's sent in and they can check once again that it's been sent. You can then check that on your end to see if on the IRS, on the refund status, where's my refund tool to see if it's been accepted and so on. But past that point, they're not going to be able to pressure the IRS. No average taxpayer has that amount of leverage unless you're hiring some kind of super influential tax preparer or something. So ordering a tax transcript will not help a taxpayer get their refund faster or find out when they'll get their refund. The information available on the where's my refund is the same information available to IRS Telephone Assistors. So again calling them, it sounds like most likely won't give you any more information and it's going to cause you a huge headache because you will most likely be on hold for possibly a month. Taxpayers can find answers to questions, forms and instructions and easy to use tools at IRS.gov. This new release is part of a series called the Tax Time Guide. There's a link to that here. A resource to help taxpayers file an accurate tax return. Additional help is available in Publication 17, your federal income tax for individuals. There's a link to that publication. There's links to more resources down below including directory to federal tax return preparers with credentials and select qualifications, choosing a tax professional IRS free file, free tax return preparation for qualified taxpayers. There's links to all that wonderful information here. There'll be a link to this in the description.