 Internal Revenue Service IRS Tax News! IRS Updates feature on Where's My Refund? Which is great! I hope they update the feature that gets the refund out faster. However, judging by past performance, I assume the new feature will be some kind of advanced excuse maker. Oh your refund is late is it? No worries and don't blame us. We have generated 1001 excuses for your review. Excuses such as, due to our large emoting hearts over here at the IRS, we recently adopted many dogs from the pound. Dogs slated to be executed, but apparently the new dogs didn't know how to behave in the IRS office, so we had to lock them in a small room and use your tax return to cover the floors so as to make the cleaning up process after our new dogs easier. And that's just one of the many excellent excuses you can look forward to being able to select from when you use the Where's My Refund tool. Please select the excuse you feel will most effectively get you to sit down and shut up because the refund will get there when it gets there. Okay that was a bit of a rant. This is the actual news here getting down to it. Taxpayers can now track refunds for past two years. IR 2022-109, May 25, 2022 Washington. The Internal Revenue Service made an important enhancement to the Where's My Refund online tool this week introducing a new feature that allows taxpayers to check the status of their current tax year and two previous year's refunds. Amazing! Taxpayers can select any of the three most recent tax years to check their refund status. They'll need the Social Security number or ITIN filing status and expected refund amount from the original filed tax return for the tax year they're checking. Previously, Where's My Refund, here's the link to the tool here if you want to check it out, only displayed the status of the most recently filed tax return within the past two tax years. Information available to those calling the refund hotline will be limited to the 2021 tax return. So it's kind of interesting it looks like the Where's My Refund tool might actually be giving you more information than if you were to call the IRS which in my opinion is also the IRS basically saying don't call us right use the refund use the tools we don't want to talk to you on the on the phone you'll actually get more information on the Where's My Refund tool than if you get contact with some kind of person at the IRS possibly but in any case use it where's my refund there's a link to that here taxpayers can start checking the status of the refund within 24 hours after e-filing a tax year 2021 return three or four days after e-filing a tax year 2019 or 2020 return four weeks after mailing a tax a return the IRS reminds taxpayers that online account continues to be the best option for finding their prior year adjusted gross income balance due or other type of account information so if you're using the Where's My Refund tool you might need that that amount the AGI for example possibly you can find that on your online account and you want to be using your online account the IRS is trying to push people more and more into the online account they stopped doing I think they stopped doing the facial recognition thing and putting a chip in your forehead and trying to track your every movement at this point in time and they're just going to do an online account so I think you can trust it at least for the time being so you probably want to check that out because you get some information from it and they're going to try to guide more stuff to that online account I would assume just because that's the easiest thing to do quote we encourage those to expect a refund but request an extension to file as soon as they're ready we process returns on a first in basis so the tax return process you would hope would be on that kind of basis so in other words you know the first in first out when you file the return they're going to work on the ones in some kind of order they shouldn't be because it's a bureaucratic system kind of prioritizing someone based on who they are so that means if you call your tax practitioner you shouldn't have any special sway I'm sure some people do but right and you shouldn't have any special sway to call in and say hey can you process can you put my tax return on the top of the line that's not how the bureaucratic system is supposed to work it's first in first served kind of thing so we process returns on a first in basis so the sooner the better end quote said irs commissioner chuck reddit quote there's usually no reason to wait until october 17th if filers have the relevant information to file now free file there's a link to that here is still available for extension recipients to use the prepare and file their federal tax return for free so that's the link that gets you to the third party software so you want to use that if you have the capacity to uh and and you do if your income is below a certain threshold and I think you will not have access to it after uh the extension deadline on october 17th I believe so if you're planning on using that use it before that time electronic filing is open 24 7 and the irs continues to receive returns and issue refunds once taxpayers have filed they can track the refund with where's my refund about the where's my refund tool tell us about it give us some info on that that's what we want to know this helpful tool accessible on irs.gov irs.gov vv for victory over tax stuff or you can use the mobile app which I still haven't done because I'm not super cool anymore I am or ever ever was I don't have an app that so don't check it on the app but if you were super cool that's what you'd be using irs to go there's a link to that here it's a mobile app allows taxpayer payers to track their refund through three stages number one return received number two refund approved and then number three the refund has been sent the tool is updated once a day usually overnight and gives taxpayers a projected refund issuance date as soon as it's approved so remember it's only updated once a day so if you're checking it if you know someone is checking it all the time like you're going to like an amusement park and you're on a roller coaster and they pull out their phone the middle of the roller coaster and they go to that iris to go kind of thing and check the status for like the 20th time in a day they have a problem they should put the phone down turn it off you know that you don't need to check it maybe twice maximum for to be a check it out so in any case work on that work on these things so it's also one of the most popular online features available from irs I yeah I could see why so the where's my refund tool was developed in 2002 and was used by taxpayers more than 776 million times in 2021 uh enhancing taxpayers experience in it modernization the irs continues to enhance the customer experience by enhancing and expanding digital tools to deliver improved services to taxpayers quote the irs is committed to identifying opportunities to make improvements in real time for taxpayers and the tax professional community uh in quote said reddick quote uh this enhancement to where's my refund is just one of many in quote so we got a lot of lot to look forward to according to the irs mr reddick here so that's that's good I'll believe it when I see it but I appreciate the increase in the technology additional refund status information uh there's no need to call the irs so here we go here it is please don't call us we got everything on the website and yeah we don't want to talk to you and we don't have we don't have the capacity to so here we go there's no need to call the irs to check on refund status unless unless it has been more than 21 days since the return was filed or the tool says the irs can provide more information if the irs needs more information to process the return the taxpayer will be contacted by mail so obviously if the tool says hey we don't got enough to you know if there's you don't have to stuff to process it the irs will typically tell you that at some point in time and usually the irs still does the mail contact so you should be getting something in the mail uh based on that information so for more information about checking the status of a tax refund please visit where's my refund there's a link to that tool there's links to whatever other link i said there was a link to here and there'll be a link to this in the description