Many of you may be aware (or experiencing!) the unprecedented snarl that the IRS is in lately. There have been MANY tax changes relating to the COVID-19 crisis, and juggling all of these changes plus working to get various stimulus payments out the door has caused an enormous backlog of unprocessed tax returns and refunds to stack up. The current estimated wait time for getting your return processed is 20 weeks from the date you filed. (Compared to 21 DAYS that was the norm.) Before I get too far, I want to warn you that I don’t have any magical cures for getting your refund to you. The fact is, the IRS is simply very very behind in processing returns. And their telephone helplines are a maze of automated “Select 1 for a frontal lobotomy, Select 2 for information on how to order a stress ball for the amount of pain we are currently causing you.” But I did think this would be a good time to mention some tools that the IRS has in place that might help you check on the status of your account with the IRS, without having to wait on hold for hours to talk to an actual agent.
Where’s My Refund Tool
This one has been well covered in the media if you know what you’re looking for, but I did want to mention it just in case. Located here, the refund tool allows you to check receipt of your IRS return, as well as “status.” And by status, I mean the most generic, not-so-helpful status available. 🙂 What this tool CAN do for you is verify that your return has been officially received and accepted. It can also let you know when your refund, if you have one, has been issued and sent. What it DOESN’T do a good job of doing is letting you know exactly what kind of “processing” or “reviewing” your return is undergoing. And unfortunately for this tax year, these two statuses are where a lot of returns spend the most time.
Request a Transcript
If you want a little more information on what’s going on, you can try requesting a copy of your transcript here. There are a few different types of transcripts available, and the IRS provides a list of these types with descriptions here. These transcripts (for the most part) are free to request. They are a good way to check on the information being submitted for you, either on your behalf (by employers, lenders, etc), or that you or your accountant submitted yourself. For example, an employer is required to submit a copy of your W2 (for employees) or 1099 (for contractors) to the IRS as well as provide you with a copy. If you’ve maybe lost your copy, or would like to double check that the information is accurate, you can do this here. This is also a good way to check and see whether the IRS has sent you any notices that you might need to respond to. For example, a late-change in the tax law for 2021 adjusted how unemployment credits are calculated. For some taxpayers who had already submitted their Form 1040, the IRS was required to recalculate a return. For any returns impacted, they mailed a paper notice out. This notice was informational only, and (usually) required no response. However, sometimes the IRS DOES need a response from you on these notices, and it’s possible that the notice got lost in the mail or delivered to a different address. So it may be a good idea to check and see whether your Account Transcript shows that a notice was sent, so you can compare it with the notices you actually received.
View Your Account
I personally ran into this issue recently. Like I mentioned above, my Account Transcript showed I was mailed a letter from the IRS back in October. I never saw this letter, whether it was due to me not receiving it, or whether a family member mistook it for junk mail and threw it away, the result was that I had no idea what it said, and whether I needed to take action on it! Well, in some cases, you can retrieve a copy of these notices by opening them from your account dashboard. Located here, you can sign up to receive an email every time a notice is uploaded to this portal. Fair warning, it’s been my experience that there are delays with things getting uploaded here too. However, you can also view information on past tax year balances, make payments on balances due, or sign up for a tax payment plan.
