The influx of Americans who filed their taxes earlier this year in the hopes of receiving a quicker refund may be experiencing a sense of déjà vu right about now.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is still playing catch up this year after technical glitches, government staff shortages, and interminable processing delays marred last year’s tax season.
It’s about to face its first major test. American families who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Additional Child Tax Credit are expecting to receive their return checks this week. Both of these programs were created to assist the exact people who are most in need of their refund checks: the working and middle-class families.
Because of a 2015 anti-fraud regulation known as the PATH Act (Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not permitted to begin providing refunds to those who claimed either of the two tax credits listed above until February 15, 2018. That’s right, today!
According to the tone of several Facebook groups and other online forums dedicated to tax refunds, a large number of taxpayers in this category are anticipating the passage of the PATH deadline. Some customers, on the other hand, maybe dismayed to hear that they may still have to wait a few weeks before receiving their refund.
If you have filed your tax return online and used direct deposit, you should receive your refund by March 1, according to an IRS update on the subject. If you filed online and used direct deposit, you should receive your refund by March 1.
The good news is that that date is most certainly an overestimation of what will happen. According to the IRS, some taxpayers who fall into this group may receive their refunds sooner than others. However, given the apocalyptic nature of last year’s tax season, it’s definitely not a bad thing to have more realistic expectations this year.
The Biden administration has suggested increasing funding for the Internal Revenue Service to assist it in addressing infrastructure and staffing challenges. However, many of the issues that plagued the agency last year are still very much in effect, and some new ones are emerging at an alarming rate.
The Internal Revenue Business announced last week that it will be abandoning a new verification system after privacy concerns were raised over the use of face recognition technology by a third-party service.