 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news, reasons why some tax refunds filed electronically take longer than 21 days. And after that, I'll give you the rationale and reasoning why I couldn't turn my homework in on time. It has to do with my new dog. But first, an attempt at a joke I apologize in advance. I needed help with video editing, so I looked into the interwebs for instruction and found an interweb page that said it could help. But it was awfully rude calling me a tube, whatever that means. And I was like, no, you, you the tube, you the tube, don't be projecting at me like that. Maybe you have a flat screen now, but you totally have tube in your blood or wires or circuits or whatever. You're the tube. So I looked elsewhere on the interwebs, finding another interweb page saying it could help. But it was also awfully rude calling me a dummy. You to me actually being a good site that I do recommend. But in any case, I was like, wait a second, I'm not the dummy. Just because I'm looking for help, you, you the dummy, you the dummy, you don't even know how to spell dummy. And what's with the one letter you for you? What is this a text message? Plus, you dummy, isn't just one word, you, you the dummy. I feel like the interwebs seem like a really hostile place these days. I are 2022-65, March 23, 2022, Washington, even though the internal revenue service issued most refunds in less than 21 days for taxpayers who filed electronically and shows direct deposit. Some refunds may take longer. Many different factors can affect the timing of a refund after the IRS receives a return. A manual review may be necessary. If a manual review is necessary, we know that's a problem. They could go back to the end of a very long stack at that point in time because of, you know, the mandates that went in place, the social distancing and basically, you know, the restrictions with regards to the vaccination and stuff and all that kind of stuff. So they're kind of short staffed over there and already backed up on the manual review stuff. So you want to avoid the manual review process. If at all possible, you do that by trying to make the tax return perfect when you return it in so that you don't have any manual review necessary. So a manual review may be necessary when a return has errors, is incomplete or is affected by identity theft or fraud. Other returns can also take longer to process, including when a return that needs a correction to the child tax credit or recovery rebate credit amount. So these are the two credits that they knew were going to cause problems. Everybody knew they were going to cause problems going into it for one because we solved the recovery rebate credit. Many people had problems with them in the prior year because it was on the prior year return. And so we were anticipating that they were going to have problems in the next return. That one's confusing because you have the prepayment of the stimulus checks and the stimulus checks don't really sound anything like the economic impact payment checks. That is the recovery rebate credit and it's a prepayment which is confusing in and of itself and the prepayment is going to have some errors even though it's based on a pretty minimal amount of information to make it. And you've got the fact that you've got the stimulus payments, two of them were applied to 2021. One of them applied to, I mean, sorry, two of them applied to the prior year 2020 and then one of them, the last one applied to this year 2021. So when you're thinking recovery rebate credit, you're thinking that's tied to the stimulus payment. Hopefully you got the full amount of the stimulus payment, the third one that is, and therefore you don't have to do anything with the recovery rebate credit, but you do have to do something if there was something wrong with the stimulus payment because this is the last catch resort to fix it. The child tax credit, we knew that was going to be a problem because once again they changed the law so it's different now than it was before and they sent out the prepayments for those, which there's even a larger kind of likelihood that there's errors in the prepayment because they had to estimate it based on the 2020 tax return or possibly 2019. And you can imagine situations where people have different custody issues where they have joint custody kind of scenarios, so the prepayments may not be exactly, you know, they could have problems with the estimates. And then when you file the tax return, you got to deal with the prepayments to calculate the tax return correctly, which no one's ever done before. So problems have been caused. Problems have happened by no fault of anyone. Problems have happened and it's caused delay. So it includes a claim filed for an earned income tax credit. That one's always been a problem because it's a complicated credit to calculate, although it's been around for a while, but they have some significant changes to that, which makes it confusing, including possibly being able to use the prior year tax taxable income. So that's kind of so some confusing component software really helps with this stuff or an additional child tax credit or includes a form 8379 injured spouse allocation, which could take up to 14 weeks to process. What 14 weeks? The fastest way to get a tax refund is by filing electronically and choosing direct deposit taxpayers who don't have a bank account can find out more on how to open an account at FDIC insured bank. There's a link to that here or the national credit union locator tool. There's a link to that here. The IRS cautions taxpayers not to rely to rely on receiving a refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or bill or paying bills. Obviously, if money is tight, you got to do what you got to do, but you don't want to do anything more than you got to do based on the fact that you're going to get a refund. You don't want to be going out and spending a bunch of money before you actually get the refund because you can't really trust the refund until you actually get the refund because they might do something funny over there at the Internal Revenue Service or possibly do nothing at all for a long period of time. So summary terms may require additional review and may take longer. Also, remember to take into consideration the time it takes for a financial institution to post the refund to an account or to receive it by mail to check the status of a refund. Taxpayers should use the Where's My Refund tool. There's a link to that on irs.gov, irs.gov, the IRS website. Information for the most current tax you're filed is generally available within 24 hours after the IRS acknowledges receipt of a taxpayer's e-filed return. If they filed a paper return, taxpayers should allow for four weeks before checking the status. The IRS will contact taxpayers by mail when more information is needed to process a return. IRS phone and walk-in representatives can only research the status of a refund if it has been 21 days or more since it has filed electronically or since the IRS filing season start date, whichever is later, six weeks or more since a return was mailed or when Where's My Refund tells the taxpayer to contact the IRS before filing a return, taxpayers should make irs.gov, their first stop to find online tools to help get the information they need to file. So you can go to irs.gov, it's got a lot of information on it. The tools are easy to use and available anytime. Yeah, kind of, you know, they're not too bad. They're not as good as like financial institutions. They could get better, but they're improving. Millions of people use them to help file and pay taxes, find information about their accounts, get answers to tax questions and get tips on filing a return. 2020 tax returns waiting on a 2020 tax return to be processed. People whose tax returns from 2020 have not yet been processed should still file their 2021 tax returns by April due date or request and extension to file. Those filing electronically in this group need their adjusted gross income or AGI from their most recent tax return for those waiting on their 2020 tax return to be processed. Make sure to enter zero for last year's AGI. That's kind of like the secret security passcode or like when you're playing a video game and you got to hit up, up, right, left, left, A, A, B, A, that's what you have to do here. If you want to file electronically because you don't have the prior year's AGI number. And if you don't have that, then what do you do? You've got to hit zero. You got to know that. So if someone doesn't know the secret code to get this thing to work, this little video game, then let them know that. Let's read it one more time. Those filing electronically in this group need their adjusted gross income or AGI from their most recent tax return. But what if you don't have that because your tax returns not processed for 2020 yet? So for those waiting on their 2020 tax return to be processed, make sure to enter zero, zero. And by the way, you might say, I do have it because I filed the return. That's true, but the IRS doesn't have it because it hasn't been processed yet. So they won't know that you have the correct AGI that you put in the system. So you have to enter zero for the last year's AGI on the 2021 return, visit validating your electronically filed tax return for more details. Also, when filing self preparing a tax return and filing electronically, tax mess payers must sign and validate the electronic tax return by entering their prior year adjusted gross income AGI or prior year self select pin PIN SSP. Those two electronically filed last year may have created a five digit self select pin to use as their electronic signature. Generally, tax software automatically enters the information for returning customers. Taxpayers who are using a software product for the first time may have to enter this information. Taxpayers should review the special instructions to validate and electronically file 2021 tax return if their 2020 return has not been processed or they use the non-filer tool in 2021 to register for an advanced child tax credit payment or third economic impact payment in 2021. So there's links to some of that information here and there'll be a link to this in the description.