Your tax refund may take a bit longer this year
Today is tax day – the deadline for filing your 2020 taxes. But even if you filed early this year, you may still be waiting for your refund. Why? Taxes have been extra complicated because of the pandemic. Now, the IRS is buried in a huge backlog: 30 million tax returns flagged for a manual review. Both from 2020 and 2019.
Samuel McConnell and his wife Wendi filed their 2020 tax return in February. But they’re still waiting for their $2,900-dollar refund. The IRS just tells them: Your return is being processed.
“With no other information – no information, why,” he said.
It’s always tempting to blame things on your kids. But this time, the delay really could be due to McConnell’s daughter, Maggie.
‘Well, since Maggie was born in January of 2020, the IRS didn’t know about her,” he said.
So McConnell claimed Maggie’s COVID relief payments on their 2020 taxes. That may have put them in that backlog of 30 million returns.
Erin Collins is the IRS’s national taxpayer advocate.
“Thirty million returns for however many IRS employees to process is a very large lift for the IRS,” she said, adding that it doesn’t help the IRS’s budget was cut 20 percent over the past decade.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
