Taxpayers Are Asking the IRS: 'Where's My Refund?'
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Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, May 11th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. For many Americans, this year's tax refund will be key to helping them pay the bills as they recover from the pandemic and try to get their personal finances back in order. But for a lot of them, the anticipation of that money landing in their bank account has turned to frustration as they look to the IRS and wait and wait and wait.
They still are working on about 1 million returns from 2019. Many of those are on paper. And they have a backlog right now of 16 or 17 million returns from 2020.
So what's holding things up? And is there anything you can do about it? Our tax reporter Laura Saunders has been in touch with IRS officials, and she'll have some answers for us after the break.
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Why are taxpayers waiting longer than usual for their refunds?
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The deadline to file your taxes this year is May 17th, less than a week away. And while lots of people who filed ahead of time have gotten their refund, others have been waiting for a long time, and many are having trouble getting any answers from the IRS. Our tax reporter, Laura Saunders, has been checking into this, and she joins us now with details. Laura, thanks for being here.
Well, thanks so much for having me.
You know, Laura, this is becoming a tradition. You're coming on the show and answering that question, dude, where's my refund?
Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, it's happening all too much. And I'm trying to help people understand what's going on.
So last year, the IRS had similar problems getting refunds out the door, and they blamed it on office closures and changes to the schedule due to the pandemic. What's the excuse this year?
Well, it's about the same thing. It has to do with the pandemic and also Congress. Usually when you're mad at the IRS, you should also be mad at Congress. And Congress this year changed the tax law for 2020 in March after millions of people had already filed their 2020 taxes. That's one big problem. And then another one is that they're having a hard time handling paper returns because, you know, the teleworking has worked fairly well the way it has for a lot of companies. But for a long time, they were just putting all their mail into big trailers and locking it up and letting it sit till they could get people back into the offices. So try not to send a paper return. Some people have to.
So the IRS and Congress have been kind of tinkering with the rules, like you said, since people began filing back in January. And then the filing deadline was delayed until May 17th next week. So are these delays just affecting people who filed in, say, the last month or so?
Well, I think it's been affecting all kinds of people. It's better if you haven't filed until recently. The people who are stuck are the people who filed before the law changed in March. One of the big changes was that Congress voted that up to $10,200 per recipient. of unemployment benefits would get those benefits federal tax-free. And the IRS is actually going to go back and comb through all the returns and adjust it and send them refunds if they're owed.
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