 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news, why it may take longer than 21 days for some taxpayers to receive their federal refund COVID tax tip 2022-54 April 7, 2022. The IRS issues most refunds and fewer than 21 days for taxpayers who file electronically and choose direct deposit. Now note, of course, that 21 days has got to be some kind of average, so you would expect some people would get it sooner than 21 days, some people further out than 21 days, and you would expect that there would be outliers as well, those kind of unusual types of circumstances as well. So you've got to take an average like that with a grain of salt, fairly large grain of salt, a big salt granular. So in any case, however, some returns have errors or need more review and may take longer to process. So obviously, if there's an error with the return, if there's anything that's going to cause the actual IRS to have a human being look at the return as opposed to it just being processed, that's going to take longer, especially now due to the problems with COVID and so on and the social distancing and the restrictions and whatnot. So they're backed up on the manual returns at this point in time. So if it goes into that heap, that infinitely long heap of things that need to be processed kind of thing that you would think could delay the process quite a bit. So the IRS works hard to get refunds to taxpayers quickly, but taxpayers shouldn't rely on getting a refund by a certain date. So obviously you got to do what you have to do, but you don't want to depend on the refund if you haven't yet received the refund, if you don't have to in that case, because of course there could be problems, there could be an issue, a glitch, a change, and or a delay. So things that can delay a refund, what kind of things might delay the refund, how to avoid the delay possibly would be some questions to ask here. The return has errors is incomplete or is affected by identity theft or fraud. So obviously if there's errors involved, that means for example, the computer itself will spit out an error you would think when they try to process the return, if you had something that doesn't match the documentation, like a W2 doesn't match what's on the W2 that they have, because the W2 was not only sent to you, it was sent to the employer as well. Same with the 1099s and most likely the errors are coming up and we know they were from the prior year as well from the new things that are happening, changes to the laws, things that people are not used to, and these prepayments, these estimate kind of things because there's an estimate component in it. And that's also confusing, that happens with things like the earned income credit which has that recovery rebate credit where you got to have that prepayment kind of thing, it's new and there's three of them and so it's kind of confusing which ones tied to the prior year versus the current year. We had the child tax credit which changed dramatically and there was the advanced child tax credit payment so there's room for errors or estimates to be wrong on that and to not have your prepayment thing set up correctly and it's a new thing so clearly that's a big place where people are most likely making a substantial amount of errors and kind of possibly delaying the tax return. And then identity theft, the increase in these refundable credits, the capacity to have these refundable credits has greatly increased the demand for identity theft for people to try to steal identities to try to get a piece of these refundable credits like the increased child tax credit, the increase in the earned income credit, these recovery rebates and so on. So obviously identity theft could cause delays in the refund. If someone already filed the return for your social security number and name to try to fraudulently take your refund with these credits or something that is going to cause a problem. So the return needs a correction to the child tax credit or recovery rebate credit so these are the new ones that they know they're going to cause problems, child tax credit, recovery rebate credit. The return has a claim filed for an earned income tax credit, additional child tax credit or includes a Form 8379 injured spouse allocation. The time it takes a taxpayers bank or credit union to post the refund to the taxpayers account. You would think the bank is fairly quick. You can kind of try to blame it on a bank maybe a couple of days you think maybe that might delay it there but I would think the bank would be fairly quick but in any case the bank might be the bank is the bad guy here obviously. So the IRS will contact taxpayers by mail if it needs more information to process their return. The fastest way to get a tax refund is by filing electronically and choosing direct deposit so that's what they're trying to push here if you're depending on that refund if you want that refund faster electronic filing direct deposit they say that's the fastest way to go. If you're not getting a refund if you're paying them money then processing quickly may not be a big deal to you as long as you're not getting hit with the sticks of penalties and interest so you might file a paper return and send them a paper check and let them throw it up the end of the pile and not cash it forever or whatever but even then you might want to actually file the return electronically because I kind of like the verification that they processed it they didn't lose it in the mail or something like that. So people who don't have a bank account can learn about opening an account at an FDIC insured bank there's a link to that here or the National Credit Union locator tool there's a link to that locator tool here. Taxpayers can check the status of their refund online if you want to do that there's a status check tool to check the status of a refund there's a link to that here taxpayers should use the where's my refund where's my refund tool so there's a link to here it's on the irs.gov website if taxpayers file electronically they would wait 24 hours before checking the status of their refund if taxpayers file a paper return they should wait four weeks before checking the status those paper returns are probably not going to be processed that quickly these days may not may not be the top of the process list there's kind of a pile there's a big pile of return somewhere on some bureaucratic giant office building so IRS representatives on the phone and taxpayers assistance centers can only research the status of a refund if it's been 21 days or more since the taxpayer filed the return electronically it's been six weeks or more since the taxpayer mailed the return the where's my refund tool tells the taxpayer to contact the IRS so there's links to some of this wonderful information here there'll be a link to this in the description